
Class. 



Book B^ 



t 



Mil. TRENTON, OF MISSOURI. . ,^^ 

iK RXPLY TO ' ^ '^ %: 

M R . WEBS 'r E R : 

HE RESOLUTION OFFERKD EY MR, FOOlV 

RELATIVE TO 



BEING UNDER CONSIDERATION. ^ ^^ 



EI-IVERED IN TSE SISATE, SESSION 1829-3( 



WASHINGTON " 

PRINTED BT GAIES ij SEAT€> 



SPEECH 

«^ OF 

^ Mr. BENTON^ OF MISSOURI^ 

IN llEPLX TO 

Mr. WEBSTER: 

DE1ITEB.ED IN THE SENATE, SESSION 1829-30. 



OC/'In publishing Mr. Benton's Speech, in reply to Mr, 
Websteh, it has been deemed fair and candid to prefix 
to the publication the following extracts from Mr. Web- 
ster's printed Speech, to which the reply was princi- 
pally directed. 

THE extracts. 

" I come now, Mr. President, to that part of the gen- 
*• tleman's speech, which has been the main occasion oi 
" my addressing the Senate. The East ! the obnoxious, 
*' the rebuked, the always reproached East ! We have 
** come in, sir, on this debate, for even more than a com- 
'* mon shai-e of accusation and attack. If the honorable 
** member from South Carolina was not our original ac- 
'*cuser, he has yet recited the indictment against us 
•* with the air and tone of a public prosecutor. He has 
** summoned us to plead on our arraignment ; and. he tells 
" us we are charged with the crime of a narrow and self- 
*^ ish policy ; of erideavoring to restrain emigration to the 
** West ,- and, having that object in view, of maintaining 
•* a steady oppposition to Western measures and Western 
*' interests. And the cause of all this narrow and sel/lsh 
*' policy, the gentleman finds in the tariff— I think he 
** called it the accursed policy of the tariff. This pohcy, 
** the gentleman tells us, requires multitudes of depend- 
*' ent laborers, a population of paupers; and that it is to se- 
** cure these at home, that the East opposes whatever 
** may induce to Western emigration. Sir, I rise to de« 



'* fend the East. I rise to repel, both the charge itself, 
" and the cause assigned for it. I deny that the East hasy 
'*' at any tinier shewn an illiberal policy towards the West. 
'* I pronounce the whole accusation to be without the least 
" foundation in any facts, existing either now, or at aiiy 
'•'■ previous time. I deny it in the general, and I deny each 
" and all its particulars. I deny the sum total, and 1 deny 
" the detail. I dtny that the East has ever manifested has- 
" iility to the West ; and I deny that she has adopted any 
''^policy that would naturally have led her in such a course." 

'* The Indian title has been extinguished at the expense 
" of many millions. Is that nothing" ? There is still a 
** much more material consideration. These colonists, if 
•• we are to call them so, in passing the Alleghany, did 
*' not pass beyond the care and protection of their own 
** Government. Wherever they went,the public arm was still 
*^ stretched over thtm. A parental Government at home, 
*' luas still ever mindful of their condition and their wants, 
*' and nothing was spared, luhich a Just sense of their ne- 
** cessities required. Is it forgotten, that it was one of the 
" most arduous duties of the Government, in its earliest 
*' years, to defend the frontiers against the Northwestern 
** Indians ? Are the sufferings and misfortunes under 
*' Harmar and St. Clair not worthy to be remembered ? 
" Do the occurrences connected with these military ef- 
•' forts shew an unfeeling neglect of Western interests." 

" But the tariff ! the tariff ! ! Sir, I beg to say, in re- 
'* gard to the East, that the original pohcy of the tariff is 
** not hers, whether it be wise or unwise. New England 
*' is not its author. If gentlemen will recur to the tariff 
** of 1 816, they will find that that was not carried by New 
** England votes. It was truly iHore a Southern than an 
" Eastern measure. And what votes carried the tariff of 
'* 1824 ? Certainly not those of New England. It is 
*' known to have been made matter of reproach, especial- 
** ly against Massachusetts, that she would not aid the 
" tariff of 1824 ; and a selfish motive was imputed to her 
" for that, also. In point of fact, it is true that she did, 
*' indeed, ojojoose the tariff of 1824. There were more 
*' votes in favor of that law in the House of Representa- 
" tives, not only in each of a majority of the Western 
*' States, but even in Virginia herself, also, than in Mas- 
** saclvisetts. It was literally forced upon New Eng- 
'• land ; and this shows how groundless, how void of 
" all probability any charge must be, which imputes 
" to her hostility to the growth of the Western States, 
" as naturally flowing from a cherished policy of her own. 
** But leaving all conjectures about causes and motives, I 



*• go at once to the fact^ and I meet it ivith one broad, com- 
** prehensive, and emphatic negative. 1 deny, that in any 
** part of her history, at any period of the Governmenf, or 
' * in relation to any leading subject, New England has 
** manifested such hostility as is charged upon her. On 
** the contrary, I maintain that, from the day of the ces- 
"■ sion of the Territories by the States to Congress, no 
" portion of the country has acted, either icith more liber- 
*' ality or more intelligence, on the subject of the Western 
*' lands, in the new States, than New England. This 
*' statement, though stro7ig, is no stronger than the strictest 
** truth ivill warrant. Let us look at the historical facts." 

Jajtuary 20, 18S0.— First Bay. 

Mr. BENTON said he could not permit the Senate to 
adjourn, and the assembled audience of yesterday to se- 
parate, without seeing an issue joined on the unexpected 
declaration then made by the Senator from Massachu- 
setts, [Mr. Webstekj — the declaration that the Northeast 
section of the Union had, at all times, and under all cir- 
cumstances, been the uniform friend of the West, the 
South inimical to it, and that there were no grounds for 
asserting the contrary. Taken by surprise, as I was, 
said Iklr. Bentox, by a declaration so little expected, 
and so much in conflict with what I had considered es- 
tablished history, I felt it to be due to all concerned to 
meet the declaration upon the instant — to enter my ear- 
nest dissent to it, and to support my denial by a rapid 
review of some great historical epochs. This I did 
upon the instant, without a moment's preparation, or 
previous thought ; but I checked myself in an effusion,* 
in which /ee/m^ was at least as predominant as judgment, 
with the reflection that issues of fact, between Senators, 
were not to be decided by bandying contradictions across 
this floor ; that it was due to the dignity of the occasion 
to proceed more temperately, and with proof in hand for 
every thing that I should urge. I then sat down witli 
the view of recommencing coolly and regularly as soon 
as I could refresh my memory with dates and references. 
The warmth of the moment prevented me from observing 
what was most obvious — namely, that the resolution under 
discussion was itself the most pregnant illustration of my 
side of the issue. It is a resolution of direst import to the 
new States in the West, involving, in its four fold aspect, 
the stoppage of emigration to that region, the limitation 
of its settlement, the suspension of surveys, the abolition 
of the Surveyor's oflices, and the surrender of large por- 
tions of Western territory to the use and dominion of 



wild beasts ; and, in addition to all this, connecting itselty 
in time and spirit, with another resolution, in the other 
end of the Capitol, for delivering- up the public lands in 
the new States to the avarice of the oldones, to be coin- 
ed into gold and silver for their beneiifei / This resolution, 
thus hostile in itself, and aggravated By an odious con- 
nexion, came upon us from the Northeast, and was 
resisted by the Sotjth. Its origin, and its progress, was 
a complete exemplification of the relative affection which 
the two Atlantic sections of the Union bear to the West. 
Its termination was to put the seal upon the question of 
that affection. The Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. 
Webstkb) to whom I am now replying, was not present 
at the offering of that resolution. He arrived when the 
debate upon it was far advanced, and he temper of the 
South and West fully displayed. He saw the condition 
of his friends, and the consequences of the movement 
which they had made. Their condition was that of a cer- 
tain army, which had been conducl-ed, by two consuls, 
into the Caudine Forks ; the consequences might be pre- 
judicial to the Northeast — more accurately speaking, to 
a political party in the Northeast ! His part was that of 
a prudent commander — to extricate his friends from a pe- 
rilous position i his mode of doing it ingenious, that of 
starting a new subject, and moving the indefinite post- 
ponement of the impending one. His attack upon the 
South was a cannonade, to divert the attention of the as- 
sailants ; his concluding motion for indefinite postpone- 
ment, a signal of retreat and dispersion to his entangled 
friends. They may obey the signal. They may turn 
head upon their speeches, and vote for the postpone- 
ment, and avoid a direct vote upon the resolution, and 
give up the pursuit after that information which was so 
indispensable to do justice and to avoid sjspicion ; but 
in doing so, they take my ground against the resolution :, 
for indefinite postponement is rejection ; and whether 
rejected or not, the indelible cliaracter of the resolution 
must remain. It was hostile to the West ! It came from 
the Northeast ! and was resisted by the South ! 

Before I proceed to the main object of this reply, 1 
must be permitted, Mr. President, to tear away some or- 
namental work, and to remove some rubbish, which the 
Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. W. ) has placed in the 
way, either to decorate his own march, or to embarr ss 
mine. He has brought before us a certain Nathan Dane, 
of Beverly, Massachusetts, and loaded him with such ap. 
exuberance of blushing honors, as no modern name ha& 
been known to merit, or to claim. Solon, Lycurgus, and 



Numa Pompillus, are the renowned legislators of antiqui- 
ty to whom he is compared, and, only compared, for the 
purpose of being placed at their head. So much glory 
was earned by a single act, and that act, the supposed 
authorship of the ordinance of 1787", for the Government 
of the North Western Territor)', and especially of the 
clause in it which prohibits slavery and involuntary ser- 
vitude. Mr. Dane was assumed to be the author of this 
Ordinance, and especially of this clause, and upon that 
assumption was founded, not only, the great superstruc- 
ture of Mr. Dane's glory, but a claim also upon the grati- 
tude of Ohio, and all the North West, to the unrivalled 
legislator, who was the author of their happiness, and to 
the quarter of the Union which was the producer of the 
legislator. So much encomium, and such grateful con- 
sequences, it seems a pity to spoil 5 but spoilt they must 
be ; for Mr. Dane was no more the author of that Ordi- 
nance, Mr. President, than you, or I, who, about that 
time were "mewling and puling in our nurses' arms." 
That Ordinance, and especially the non-slavery clause, 
was not the work of Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, but 
of Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia. It was reported by a 
Committee of three, Messrs. Jefferson, of Virginia, Chase, 
of Maryland, and Howell, of R. I. — a majority from slave 
States, in April 1784, nearly two years before Mr. Dane 
became a member of Congress. The clause was not 
adopted at that time, there being but six States in favor 
ofit, andtl\e articles of confederation, in questions of 
;that character, requiring seven. The next year, '85, tlie 
clause, with some modification, was moved by Mr. King, 
of New York, as a proposition to be sent to a Committee, 
and was sent to the Committee accordingly ; but, still did 
not ripen into a law. A year afterwards, this clause, and 
the whole Ordinance was passed upon the report of a 
Committee of six members, of whom, the name of Mr. 
Dane, stands No. 5 in the order of arrangement on the 
Journal. There were but eight States present at the 
passing of this Ordinance, namely, Massachusetts, New- 
York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, and Georgia ; and every one voted for it. 
[Mr. B. read the parts of the Journal which verified these 
statements, and continued:] So passes away the glory of 
this world. But yesterday the name of Nathan Dane, 
of Beverly, Massachusetts, hung in equipose against half 
the names of the sages of Greece and Rome. Poetry 
and eloquence were at work to blazon his fame ; marble 
and brass, and history and song, were waiting to perform 
their office. The celestial honors of the apotheosis seem- 



eel to be onTy deferred for the melancholy event of tiie 
sepulchre. To-day, all this- superstructure of honors, hu- 
man & divine, disappears from the earth. The foundatloi; 
of the edifice is sapped; and the superhuman g-lories ol 
him, who, twenty four hours ago, was taking his station 
among the demi-gods of antiquit}', have dispersed and 
dissipated into thin air, — vanishing like tlie baseless fab- 
ric of a vision, whicli leaves not a wreck behind. 

So much for the ornamental work ; uo-a' for the rub- 
bish. 

The Senatcrfrom Massachusetts, (Mr. W.) has dwelt 
with much indignation upon certain supposed reviling^; 
of the Nev/ England cliaracter. He did not indicate the 
nature of th.e revilings^nor the name of the reviler. I, 
for one, disclaim a knowledge of the thing, and the doing 
of the thing itself. I deal in no general imputations'upou 
eommunities. Such reflections are generally unjust, and 
ahvays unwise. I am no defanier of New England. The. 
man must be badly informed upon the history of these 
States who does not know the great points of the 
Kev,- England character. lie must poorly appreciate 
national renown in arms and letters, — national great- 
ness, resting on the solid foundations of religion, 
morality, and learning, who does not respect the people 
among whom these things are found in rich abundance. 
Vet, 1 must say, the speech of yesterday forces me to say 
it, that, in a political point of view, the population of 
Kev\- England does not stand undivided before me. A 
iine of drvision is drawn througii tlie m.ass, whetlier ** lio- 
yizontally," leaving the rich and vx^e!I-born above, tiie 
poor and iil-born below ^ or, vertically, so as to preseiu 
a section of each layer, is not for me to afBrm. The di- 
vision exists. On one side of it we see friends who have 
adhered to us in every diversity of fortune, who have 
been with us in six troubles, and will not desert us in tlie 
seventh ; men who were with us in *98, and in the late 
war, whose grief and joy rose and sunk with ours in the 
struggle with Engkand, who wept _ v/ith us over the ca- 
lamities of the liorth-v.est, and rejoiced in the splendid 
glories of the south-v/est I On the other side, v/e see 
those who vv'ere against us in all these trials; who thought 
it unbecoming a moral and religious people to celebrate 
tlie triumphs of their own country over its enemy, but 
quite becoming tlie same people, to be pleased at 
the victories of the enemy, over their country ; who 
gave a dinner to him that surrendered Detroit. Tlie 
line of division exists. On one side of it, stands the de- 
mocracy of New England, to v^-liom v,-e give the riglV: 



hand of fellowship at home and abroad ; on the other 
side, all that stands opposed to that democracy, for 
whose personal welfare we have the best wishes ; but 
with whom we must decline, as publicly as it was prof- 
fered, the honor of that alliance which was yesterday 
vouchsafed to the West, if not in direct terms, at least 
by an implication which no one misunderstood. When, 
then, the People of New England shall read of these 
reviling's, in that well delivered speech of yesterday, let 
them remember that an issue of fact is joined upon the 
assertion, and that it is contained in the same speech 
which supposes Nathan Dane, of Beverly, Massachusetts, 
to have been the author of a certain production in the 
year 1786, w^hich tlie Journals of Congress shew to have 
been the work of Thomas Jefferson, of Monticello, Vir., 
in the year 1784 ! The same speech which claims, for 
New England, the gratitude of the North-western States 
for passing that ordinance, when the Journals prove, that 
it had the votes of four States, from the south of the 
Potomac, and only one from New England ! When it 
could have passed without the New England vote, but 
not without three of the Southern ones ! 

But I did say something which might be underetood 
as a reproach upon some of the leading characters of 
New England ; it was upon the subject of emigration to 
the West, and their opposition to it. I quoted high au- 
thority at the time, the authority of gentlemen who had 
served in Congress, and made their statements in the 
Virginia Convention, under the highest moral respon- 
sibilities. Their statement is denied. I will, therefore, 
produce authority from a different quarter, and of a more 
recent application ; the letter of a son of New England, 
to another son of the same quarter of the Union. 

THE LETTER. 

'♦ From the Boston Centinel, A.pril 18th, 1827. 
An extract from a let:er vvriilen by the Hon. John QuiNcr 

Adams, while Minister at the Court of Rassia, to Dr. Ben ja- 

wiN WATEnHOUSB, in Cambridge, dated 

St. PETERsBunGH,24ih Oct. 1815. 

(The [)p. had mentioned the vast emigratiori tVom New 
England to the Western Territories, about, and previously to 
the time of his writing; to which poriion of his letter, Mr. 
Adams replied as follo»vs: — ) 

" I am not displeased to hear that Ohio, Kentucky, India- 
na, iMuisiana, are rapidly peopling with Yankees. I consider 
them as an excellent race of People, and as far as I am able 
to jadge, I believe that their moral and political character, far 
from degenerating, improves by eraigtatiou. I have always 
felt on that account a sort of predilection for those rising 
1# 



10 



Western States ; and have seen luith no small astonishmenlf 
the prejudices harbored agamst them. There is not upos 
this globe of Earth, a spectacle exhibited by man, so interest- 
ing to my mind, or so consolatory to my heart, as this meta- 
morphosis of howling deserts into cultivated fields and popu- 
lous villages, which is yearly, daily, hourly, going on by the 
hands chiefly of New England men, in our Western States 
and Territories. 

" If New England loses her influence in the Councils of the 
Union, it will not be owing to any diminution of her popula- 
tion, occasioned by these emigrations: it will be from the 
partial, sectarian, or as Hamilton called it, clannish spirit, 
which makes so many of hev political leaders jealous and en. 
vious of the west and South. This spu-it is in its nature nar^ 
row and contracted ; and it always ivorks by means like itself. 
\li natural tendency is to excite arid provoke a counteracting 
spirit of the same character ; and it has actually produced that 
effect in our country. It has combined the Southern and 
Western parts of the United States, not in a league, but in a 
concert of political views adverse to those of New England. 
The fame of all the great Legislators of antiquity is founded 
upon their contrivances to strengthen and multiply the princi- 
ples of aiiraction in civil society : — Our legislators seem to de- 
light in multiplying and fomeiitiug the pi inciples of repulsion.^' 

Having read this letter of Mr. Adams, Mr. B. continued. 
I will make no cominent on the Imguag-e here used. It 
is sufficiently significant without that trouble. — '* Partial 
— sectarian — clannish— jealous — envious — narrow — con- 
tracted — excite — provoke — multiplying — fomenting — 
principles of repulsion" — are phrases which need no 
aid from the dictionary to uncover their pregnant mean- 
ing. I will only ask for three or four concessions : 

1 . That the authority of the writer of the letter is 
canonical, and binding on the church. 

2. That it goes the full length of charging the New 
England leaders of 1813, with opposition to Western 
emigration. 

3. That nothing which I have said of the motives, or 
conduct of those who oppose this emigration, can com- 
pare in severity of expression with the language of Mr. 
Adams. 

4. That the political leaders of whom he spoke as op- 
posing emigration to the West, upon such motives, and 
by such means, are the same who are now denying it on 
this floor, and wooing the West into an alliance with 
them. 

I gave yesterday, Mr. President, the brief history of 
the great attempt in *86,7,8, to surrender the navigation 
of the Mississippi — to surrender It in violation of the arti- 
cles of confederation, by a majority of seven States, when 
the requisite majority of niTie could not be obtained — the 



11 



protracted resistaace of these attempts by the Southern 
States — their final defeat by a movement from North Ca- 
rohna — and the secrecy in which the whole was envelop- 
ed. The history of these things were given then ; the 
proofs will be produced now ; the epoch and the subject 
are entitled to the first degree of consideration in this 
inquiry into the relative affection of two great sections 
of the Union to a third ; for on this question of a sur- 
render of the navigation of the Mississippi, to the King 
of Spain, commenced that hne of separation between the 
conduct of the Northeast, and of the South, towards the 
West, which has continued to this day. 

The first movement upon this subject was in the win- 
ter of '79 — 80, It came through the French Ambassa- 
dor, the Chevaher de la Luzerne, the United States hav- 
ing no diplomatic relations, at that time, with th(- King 
of Spain. The Chevalier, in a secret communication to 
Congress, informed them, by the command of the King 
of Frajice, that the King of Spain would join the United 
States against England upon four conditions, namely : 

1. That the settlements and boundary of the United 
States should not extend further West than to the heads 
of the rivers that flowed into the Atlantic ocean. 

2. That the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi 
should belong to Spain. 

3. That the Floridas should belong to her. 

4. That the Southern States should be restrained from 
making settlements to the west of the Alleghanies, and 
that all the country beyond these mountains should be 
considered as British possessions, and proper objects for 
the arms, and permanent conquest of Spain. (Secret 
Journals, vol. 2. p. 310.) 

The proffered aUiance of Spain, upon these conditions, 
was rejected by Congress. But her aUiance was an ob- 
ject of the first importance, and to obtain it if possible, 
without the worst of these conditions, Mr. Jay was des- 
patched to Madrid. On the subject of the Mississippi, 
Mr. J AT was directed to make a sine qua non of the free 
navigation of that river, and the use of a port near its 
mouth ; on the subject of the West, for I limit myself to 
these points, he was directed to say that the West being 
settled by citizens of the United States, friendly to the 
Revolution, Congress would not assign them over to any 
foreign power. These instructions were unanimously 
given. This was in the commencement of the year '80. 
One year afterwards, to wit — the 15th of Feb. '81, one 
month before the battle of Guilford Court House, the 
delegates of Virginia, in pursuance to instructions from 
their constituents, moved to recede from so much of the 



fg 



pfevioas Instruction of Mr. Jat, as made the free nari^^- 
tion of the Missls&ippi, a sine qua norij provided, tha; 
Spain should *■ ^ unalterablif" insist upon it, and not other- 
wise come into the alliance against England j and that 
the Minister be ** ordered to exert every possible effort" to 
obtain the alliance ivithout the surrender of the naviga- 
tion of the river. On the question to agree to this mo^ 
dification of the instructions, the vote stood — Yeas^ 
Pennsylvania, Tirginiay South Carolina, Georgia, New 
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, (the 
four latter having but one member each present.) Nays, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and North Carolina. New 
Tork divided and not counted. 

This, Mr. President, is the case mentioned by Mr. Ma- 
dison, in the Virginia Convention ; the instance of will- 
ingness, on the part of the Southern States, to give up 
the navigation of the Mississippi, and its re&istance by the 
Northern States, to which he alluded. The journals 
show the facts of the case. They control the recollec- 
tions of Mr. Madison, and leave me not a word to say- 
But, the question of this navigation, and these instruc- 
tions, did not stop here. On the 10th of August follow- 
ing, it was proposed to vest the Minister at Madrid with 
discretionary power over the navigation of the Mississippi^ 
and unanimously rejected. The proposition stands thus^ 
p. 468 of the 4th volume of the journal ; 

" That ibe Minister be empowered to make sueli further 
cession of the right of these United States to the navigation of 
the Mississippi as he may think proper ; and on such terras 
and conditions as he mav think moat for the honor and inte- 
rest of these United Statts.'' 

Upon the question of adopting this proposition, the 
votes were unanimously against it, not of States only, but 
of Members ; every Member of every State present voting 
in the negative. This was a proud instance of unanimity. 
The result of it was, the acquisition of the alliance of 
Spain, without a surrender of the great right of navi- 
gation in tiie King of Floods. 

The question of the navigation of this river, then slept 
for four years, until the summer of 1785, when Don Gar- 
doqui, the Spanish encargado de negocioSf arrived in the 
United States, with powers to negotiate a treaty. Mr. 
Jay, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affaiis, was ap- 
pointed to treat with him. The instructions to Mr. Jay 
limited his negotiation to two points, namely : boundaries 
and navigation ; and on this latter point, the last clause of 
his instructions made the free navigation of the Mississippi 
and the use of a port near its mouth, an indispensable 
condition to the conclusion of a treaty. These instruc- 



13 



tions seem to have been given with entire unanimity. 
No division of sentiment appears on the journal, and 
nearly a whole year elapsed before any thing appears up- 
on the subject of this negotiation, thus committed to Mr. 
Jay and Don Gardoqui. At the end of that time, it was 
brought before Congress, by a letter from Mr. Jay, in se- 
cret session, and gave rise to proceedings which I beg 
leave to read, not chusing to .trust any thing to my me- 
mory, or to risk the possible substitution of my own lan- 
guage for that of the record, in a case of so much delica- 
cy and moment. 

The letter of Mr. Jay to the President of Congress. 

" Office ofForeign Atfairs, May 29, 1786. 
" Sin : l!) my negoiiations witii Mr. Gardcqiii, I oxperi- 
ence certain difficuliies, which, in my opinion, should be so 
managed, as that evtn the existence of (hem should remain a 
secrel for the present. I take the liberty, therefore, of sub- 
roittinsj to the consideiaiion of Congiess, whether il might not 
be advisable to appoint a comn»ittec, with power to instruct 
and direct me on every point and subject relative to the pro- 
posed treaty with Spain. In esse Congress shonhl think pro- 
per to appoint such a committee, 1 really think it woidd he 
prudent to keep the appointment of il secret, and to forbear 
having any conversation on subjects connected with it, except 
in Congress, and in meetings on the business of it. 

Signed, &c. " JOHN JAY." 

This letter was referred to a committee of three, name- 
ly : Mr. King, of N.Y. Mr. Pettit, of Penn. and Mr. Mon- 
roe, of Vir. They reported,, that the letter should be ta- 
ken under consideration, in committee of the whole 
House. Tiiis committee resolved to hear the Secretary 
in person, fixed a day for his attendance, and ordered 
him to state the difficulties of which his letter had given 
intimation. 

He did so in a written statement, which, including let- 
ters from Don Gardoqui, occupies some thirty pages of 
the Journal. The points of it, so far as shey are materi- 
al to the question now before the Senate, were, that t!ie 
pending negotiation for boundaries And navigaiioiiy should 
also include commerce ,• that the U. States should abandon 
to the King of Spain the exclusive navigation of the Mis- 
sissippi, for twenty -five or thirty years, and that Spain 
should purchase many articles from the United States, of 
which pickled salmon, train oil, and codfish, were particu- 
larly dwelt upon. ( Vol. 4, pages 45 to 63.) From this in- 
stant, Mr. President, the. division between the North and 
South, on the subject of the West, sprung into existence. 
A series of motions and votes ensued, and a struggle, 
which continued tv.'o years, in which Maryland and all 



14 



South, voted one way, and New Jersey, and all North, 
voted the other. The most important of these motions 
were, 1, a motion by Mr. King, of N. York, to repe&l 
the clause \n the instructions to Mr. Jay which made the 
navigation of the Mississippi a sine qua non, which was 
carried by the seven Northern States against the others. 
2. A motion by Mr. Pinckney, of S. Carohna, to revoke 
the whole instruction, and stop the negociation ; lost by 
the same vote. 3. A motion by Mr. Pmckney, seconded 
by Mr. Monroe, to declare it a violation of the articles of 
the Confederation for seven States to alter the instructions 
for negotiating a treaty, those articles requiring the con- 
sent of nine States on questions of that kind ; lost by the 
same vote. 4. A motion by the Delegates from Virginia 
to make it a sine qua non, that the citizens of the United 
States should have the privilege of taking their produce 
to New Orleans ; the U. States to have a Consul, and the 
citizens Factors there ; tliat the vessels be allowed to re- 
turn empty, and tlie produce to be exported on paying a 
small export duty : lost by tlie same array of votes. 5. A 
motion made by Mr. St. Clair, seconded by Mr. King, to 
make the same proposition, to be obtained, if possible, 
but not a. sine qua non,- carried by the ayes of New Hamp- 
shire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New 
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 7, against the noes of 
Maryland, Virginia, N. Carohna, South Carolina, Georgia, 
5 Delaware not present. 

I pause a moment, Mr. President, in the narrative of 
these occurrences to remark that the motion of the Vir- 
ginia delegation above stated, has been misunderstood ; 
that it has been supposed tlial that delegation and the 
South which voted with them, were then in f:tvor of pay- 
ing tribute to Spain, and abandoning for ever the iipwaivi, 
or ascending navigation of tiie Mississippi, and that the 
seven Northern States prevented tliat calamity to the 
West. Nothing can be more erroneous than this concep- 
tion. The attempt of Virginia was to save at all events 
— to make sure, by a sine qua non, of this poor privilege, 
of exporting, paying an export duty of 2| per cent, and 
returning empty, and this, after seeing that the whole 
right to the navigation, descending as well as ascending, 
was to be surrendered for twenty-five or thirty years. 
The vote of the seven Northern States against the Virgi- 
nia proposition was to have an opportunity of doing not 
better, but worse, for the West ; to make this same pro- 
position, not an indispensable condition to the conclusion 
of a treaty, but a mere proposal, to be obtained if it 
could, and if not, the whole right of navigation to be 
abandoned for 25 or 30 vears .This is what thev shewed 



15 



to be their disposition in adopting Mr. King's motion im- 
mediately after rejecting that of the Virginia delegation 
Mr. King's being a substantial copy of the other, except 
in the essential particulars cf the sine qua non ,• and for 
this the seven Northern States voted ; the six others op- 
posed it. 

I novi resume my narrative. 

The next motion and vote stands thus upon the Journal 
of the 28th Sept. *86. 

*' Moved by Mr. Pinckiiey, seconded by Mr. Garrington, 
That the injuriction of sec.ecy be taken off, so tar as to allow 
the delegates in Congress to commanicate to the Legislatures 
and Executives of their several Stales, the acts whicli have 
passed, and the questions which have been taken in Congress 
respeciins; the negotiations between the U. Stales and his Ca- 
tholic majesty. 

The niotJon was lost by the following vote : 

Massacliuielts. — Mr. Gorham, no, Mr. Kinf^, no, Mr^ 
Dane, no. 

Phr».!e Island.— Mr. Manning, no, Mr. Miller, no. 

Connecticut. — Mr. Johnson, no — Mr, Sturges, no. 

New York. — Mr. Haring, no, Mr. Smith, no. 

NswJeraey. — Mv. Cadwalladc-r, no, Mr. S>mmos, ay, Mr. 
Hornbio^ver, no. 

Pennsylvania — Mr. Pettit, no, Mr. St. Clair, nn. 

Marjland. — Mr. Ranisay, ay, (not counte^l.) 

Virginia.— Mr. Monroe, ay, Mr. Carrington, ay, Mr. 
Lee, ay. 

North Carolina.— Mr. Bloodworth, ay, Mr. White, isy. 

South Catolina.— Mr. Pinckney, ay, Mr. Parker, ny'. 

Georgia. — Mr. Houston, no, Mr. Few, ay. (Divided.) 

In April, 1787, Mr. Madison having become a member 
of Congress, moved two resolutions, one to transfer the 
negotiation with Spain from the United States to Madrid ; 
the other to charge Mr. Jefferson, then in France, with 
the conduct of it. (Secret Journals, vol. 4, p. 339.) 
The object of these resolutions could not be mistaken. 
They were referred by Congress to Mr. Jay, Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs, and still engaged in the negotiation 
with Don Gardoqui. He reported at large against the 
expediency of the transfer, treating it as a project to 
gain time, and complaining that the secret of the Span- 
ish negotiations had leaked out of Congress. This re- 
port and the motion of Mr. Madison, seemed to have 
been undisposed of, when an incident in real life, and 
the firm stand of one of the States, brought the majority 
of Congress to a pause, and extricated the Mississippi 
from its imminent danger. This was the arrest of a citi- 
zen of North Carolina, and the confiscation of his vessel 
and cargo, by the Spanish Governor, Grandpre at Natch- 
ez, and the decisive character of the appeal made by the 



16 



Legislature, the Governor, and the delegates in Congress 
from that State, for the redress of that outrage. Mr. 
Madison availed hinnself of the feeling produced by these 
incidents, to make another attempt to get rid of the sub- 
ject, and, in September 1788, offered a resolution that 
no further progress be made in the negotiation with 
Spain, and that the whole subject be referred to the 
new Federal Government, which was to go into opera- 
tion the ensuing year. This resolution was agreed to, 
and the Misssissippi saved. Thus ended an arduous and 
eventful struggle. The termination was fortunate and 
happy ; but the spirit which produced it has never gone 
to sleep. The idea that the Western rivers are a fund 
for the purchase of Atlantic advantages, in treaties with 
Foreign Powers, has been acted upon often since : The 
Mississippi, the Arkansas, the Red River, the Sabine and 
the Columbia, can bear witness of this. The idea that 
the growth of the West was incompatible with the su- 
premacy of the northeast, has since crept into the, legis- 
lation of the Federal Government, as will be fully deve« 
loped in the course of this debate. 

I have already given the proof of the fact, that the 
South is entitled to the honor of originating the clause 
against slavery in the Northwest Territory : the state 
of the votes upon its adoption also shows that she is en- 
titled to the honor of passing it ; there being but eight 
States present, four from each side of the Potomac, only 
one fi'om New England, and ail voting for it. This shows 
the great mistake which is committed in claiming the me- 
rit of that ordinance for the Northeast, and founding up- 
on that claim a title to the gratitude of the Northwestern 
States. The ordinance of the same epoch, for the sale 
of the Western lands, has also been celebrated, and de- 
servedly, for the beauty and science of its system of sur- 
veys. The honor of this ordinance is also assumed for 
the Northeast. Let it be so. I know nothing to the 
contrary, and what I do know, favors that idea. The or- 
dinance came from a committee of twelve, of whom 
eight were from the North, four from the South side of 
the Potomac. But, as it came from that committee, it 
would have left the whole Northwestern region a haunt 
for wild beasts and savages. The clause which required 
that every previous township should he sold out com- 
plete, before a subsequent one was offered for sale, 
would have produced this result, and was intended to 
produce it. Virginia, the Sjuth, and some Northern 
States, expunged that clause ; Massachusetts and some 
others contended for it to the last. The Northwest is 
therefore indebted to the South for the sale of its lands 



17 



it is also indebted to it for an unsuccessful attempt to 
promote the settlement of the country by reducing the 
size of the tracts to be sold. The ordinance, as report- 
ed, fixed 640 acres as the smallest division that might be 
offered for sale. Mr. Grayson, of Virginia, seconded by 
Mr. Monroe, moved to reduce the quantity to 320 acres, 
but failed in the attempt. The Virginia delegation voted 
for it unanimously ; South Carolina and Georgia both 
voted for it, but having but one member present, the vote 
did not count. Maryland voted for it ; all the rest of the 
States against it. Another attempt to benefit the settler, 
and promote the sale of the country, deserves a notice, 
though unsuccessful. It was the motion to reduce the 
price, fixed in the ordinance, from one dollar per acre 
to sixty-six and two-thirds cents. This motion was made 
by Mr. Beatty, of New Jersey, seconded by Mr. Mc- 
Henry of Maryland, and was supported by the votes of 
four States, to wit : New York, New Jersey, Maryland, 
and South Carolina ; Pennsylvania divided, and count- 
ed nothing ; the rest of the States, Virginia inclusive, 
voted against it. The motion failed, though respectably 
supported ; the price remained at one dollar, which is 
twenty-five cents less than the present minimum price of 
the same lands after forty-five years picking ; and it is 
worthy of remark, that one-third of the States were 
then, when the lands were all fresh and unpicked, in fa- 
vor of establishing a minimum price at sixty-six and two 
tiiirds cents per acre ; a fraction only over one-half of 
the present minimum ! 

I now approach, Mr. President, the subject of most 
engrossing interest to the young AVest — its sufferings un- 
der Indian wars, and its vain appeals, for so many years, 
to the Federal Government for succor and relief. The 
history of twelve years' suffering in Tennessee, from 
1780 to 1792, when the inhabitants succeeded in con- 
quering peace A-ithout the aid of federal troops ; and of 
sixteen years carnage in Kentucky, from 1774 to 1790, 
when the first effectual relief began to be extended — 
would require volumes of detail, for which we have no 
time, and powers of description, for which I have no ta- 
lent. Then was witnessed the scenes of wo and death, 
of carnage and destruction, which no words of mine can 
ever paint : instances of heroism in men, of fortitude and 
devotedness in women, of instinctive courage in little 
children, which the annals of the most celebrated na- 
tions can never surpass. Then was seen the Indian war- 
<^are in all its horrors ; that warfare which spares nei- 
ther decrepid age, nor blooming youth, nor manly 
strength, nor infant weakness — in which the sleeping 



18 



family awoke from their beds in the midst of flames and 
slaughter — when virgins were led off captive by savage 
monsters — when mothers were loaded with their chil- 
dren, and compelled to march ; and when unable to keep 
up, were relieved of their burthen by seeing the brains 
of infants beat out on a tree — when the slow consuming 
fire of the stake devoured its victim in the presence 
of pitying friends and in the midst of exulting demons ; 
when the corn was planted, the fields were ploughed, the 
crops were gathered, the cows were milked, water was 
brought from the spring,and God was wsrshipped, under 
the guard and protection of armed men ; when the night 
was the season for travelling, the impervious forest the 
high-way, and the place of safety, most remote from the 
habitation of man; when every house was a fort, and every 
fort subject to siege and assault. Such was the warfare 
in the infant settlements of Kentucky and Tennessee, and 
which the aged men, actors in the dreadful scenes, have 
related to me so many times. Appeals to the Federal 
Government were incessant and vain, during the long 
progress of these disastrous wars ;^but as the revolutiona- 
ry struggle was going on during a part of the time, and 
engrossed the resources of the Union, I will draw no ex- 
ample from that period. I will take a period posterior 
to the revolution. Three years after the peace with Great 
Britain, when the settlements in the yv^st had taken 9. 
permanent form, when the Indian hostilities were most 
inveterate, when the Federal Government had, a mihtary 
peace estabhshment of seven hundred men ; and when 
the acceptance of the cessions of tb,e public lands in the 
West, made the duty of protection no less an object of in- 
teresttu the Union, than of justice and humanity to the 
inhabitants. I will take the year 1786. What was the rela- 
tive conduct of the North and South to the infant, suffer- 
ing, bleeding, imploring West, in this season of calamity 
to her, and ability in them to give her relief ? What was 
then the conduct of each ? It was that of unrelenting se- 
verity on the part of the North— of generous and sympa- 
thising friendship on the part of the South ! The evidence 
which cannot err will prove this, and will cover with con- 
fusion the bold declarations which have imposed upon me 
the duty of this reply. I speak of the Journals of the Old 
Congress, quotations from which I now proceed to read 

"Journals of Congress, vol. 4, p. 654." 
Wkdxksiiat, Juxe 21, 1786. 
" The Secretarv of War, to whom was referred a rootion a 
Mr. GuATSOX, of Virginia, having lepcrteil the foUowin^ re 
folutioM : 



19 



•'' That the Secretary of War direct the commanding officer 
of the troops to detach two companies to the Raptds of the Ohio, 
to protect the inhabitants from the depredations and incursions 
of the Indians." 

Mark well, Mr. President, the terms of this resolution; 
to detath two companies then in service — not to raise 
them ; for the purpose of protecting the inhabitants, not 
to attack the Indians. No expense in this ; a mere change 
of position to a part of the military force then on foot. 
Observe the course of treatment the resolution received. 

The first movement against it came from the North, in 
a motion to refer the resolution to a peace committee on 
Indian Affairs. The yeas and nays on that motion were : 

Massachusetts — Aye. 

New York — Aye. 

Maryland — No. 

Virginia— No. 

North Carolina— No. 

Pennsylvania — Divided. 

New Jersey — Divided. 

New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Georgia — But one mem- 
ber — not counted. 

Delaware and South Carolina Absent. 

The motion to refer was thus lost for want of seven 
ayes. 

The second movement was from the South, Mr. Lee, 
of Virginia, seconded by Mr. Grayson, having moved to 
substitute /owr for twOf so as to double the intended pro- 
tection. 

The vote upon this motion wa^-^ 

Massachusetts-?-No. 

New York— No. 

New Jersey r-rNp, 

Pennsylvania — No. 

Maryland — No. 

North Carolina— No. 

N5W Hampshire — No. 

Virginia — Aye. 

Georgia — Aye. 

Delaware and South Carolina — Absent. 

The third trial was on the adoption of the resokition, 
and exhibited the following vote : 

New Hampshire — Mr. Lang,* aye. 

Massachusetts — Mr. Gorhara, no, Mr. King, no, Mr. Sedg- 
wick, no, Mr. Dane, no. 

Rhode Island— Mr. Manning,* aye. 

New Yoik— Mr. Haring, aye, Mr. Smith, aye. 

New Jersey— Mr. Symrnes, aye, Mr, Hornblower, aye. 

Pennsylvania — Mr. Peltit, aye, Mr. Wilson, aye. 

Maryland— Mr. Henry, aye, Mr. Uindman, aye, .\Jr. Ha:- 
rison, ^ye. 



20 



Virginia — Mr. Grayson, aye, Mr. I^i'inroe aye, i>Jr Lee. ay? 
North Carelina — Mr. RIoodv-orlh, aye, Mr. White, aye. 
Georgia — Mr Few, a\e.* 

Those marked with an asterisk, having- but one num' 
oer, were not counted. Six States only of those fully re- 
presented voted in favor of the resolution ; it was conse- 
quently lost ! Lost for want of the vote of one State, and 
that State was Massachusetts ! The next day that vote 
was supplied, but not by Massachusetts. Mr. PixcicjfET 
and Mr. Huger arrived from SOUTH CAROLINA. Mr. 
Pinckney, seconded by Mr. Carrington, of Virginia, im- 
mediately moved the rejected resolution over again, and 
South Carolina voting with the aytSy made seven affirm- 
ative States, and carried the resolution. 

This, Mr. President, is the history of the first relief 
ever extended by the Federal Government to the inhabi- 
tants of Kentucky. Your State, sir, now painted as the 
enemy of the West, turned the scale in favor of that 
small but acceptable succor. It hung upon one vote ; 
Massachusetts denied that vote ! South Carolina came 
and gave it ! 

The instant this much was obtained, the generous del- 
egates of the great and magnanimous Virginia commenc- 
ed operations to procure the real and effectual protection 
which the case required, namely, an expedition into the 
Indian territory north of the Ohio river. The Governor 
of Virginia, on the 16th of May, '86, in a letter to Con- 
gress, had recommended this course, and offered the mi- 
litia of his State to execute it. The letter was refeiTed 
to a committee of three, Messrs. Grayson and Monroe, of 
Vir. and Mr. Dane, of Massachusetts. On the 29th of June, 
just seven days afVer the vote had passed for detaching 
two companies to the Falls of the Ohio, Mr. Grayson re- 
ported upon the recommendation of the Governor of Vir- 
ginia. It was such a report as might be expected from 
a committee of which Virginia delegates constituted, the 
majority. It recommended the expedition, and gave the 
most solid and convincing reasons for agreeing to it. The 
whole report is spread upon the Journal of that day, 
(vol. 4, p. 657.) Justice to the patriots who drew it, 
and justice also to those who supported, and opposed, it, 
would require it to be read, but time forbids. I can only 
repeat, in a condensed recital, its leading contents. It 
showed that the hostile Indians were bent on v-'ar ; that 
they had treated with contempt the application which 
the United States had made to them, to meet commis- 
sioners at the mouth of the Great Miami, and conclude a 
peace ; that, issuing from their vast forests beyond the 
Ohio, and returning to them for refuge, the war was to 



21 



them a gratification of their savage thirst for blood and 
pkinder, without danger of chastisement ; that, while 
confined to defence on our side, and offence on their 
side, they had evtry motive which their savage policy re- 
quired, to carry on the war, and no motive to stop it ; that 
a march into their country was the only means of com- 
pelling them to accept peace ; and, it concluded with a 
resolution that the two companies ordered to the Falls of 
Ohio, and one thousand Virginia militia, drawn from the 
district of Kentucky, under the command of a superior 
officer, be ordered to march into the hostile Indian terri- 
tory, armed with the double authority of Commissioner 
and General, to treat as well as to fight. 

We will now see the reception which this report and 
resolution met with. 

The first movement upon it was in the way of a side 
blow, one of those operations in legislation which have 
the twofold advantage of doing most mischief, and doing 
it without appearing to be absolutely hostile to the mea- 
sure . It was a motion to postpone the consideration of 
the resolution, for the purpose of considering a proposi- 
tion which was the reverse of Mr. Grayson's report in all 
its material facts and conclusions. This new proposition 
recited, that Congress had received information that 
small parties of Indians had crossed the Ohio, and com- 
mitted depredations on the district of Kentucky ; but had 
not sufficient evidence of the aggression or hostile disposition 
of any tribes of Indians to justify the United States in car- 
rying the war into the Indian country ; and proposed a 
Resolve, that Congress would proceed — in the organization 
of the Indian Department ! ! ! and adopt such measures a« 
would secure peace to the Indians, and safety to the inhab- 
itants of the frontiers. 

Let it be remembered, Mr. President, that this pi-opo- 
sition was ofiTered on the 29th of June, 1786, when the 
Indian war in Kentucky had raged for twelve years, when 
thousands of men,women,and children, had perished; that 
it was four years afler the great buttle of the Blue Licks, 
that disastrous battle in which the flower of western chi- 
valry was cut down, and the whole land filled with grief 
and covered with mourning ; that it was the very same 
year in which an offer to treat for peace, at the mouth of 
the Great Miami, had been contemptuously rejected ; 
and, after recollecting these things, then judge of its 
statements and conclusions ! To me it seems to class it- 
self with the motions afterwards witnessed in the French 
national convention, to proceed to the order of the day 
when petitions were presented to save the lives of multi. 
tudes upon the point of assassination. The motion to 



2£ 



postpone was made ; the yeas and nays were called for 
by Mr. Grayson ; the delegations of several States voted 
for it — and let the journal of the day announce their 
names. 

New Harapshire. — Mr. Livermoie, no, Mr. Long, aye. 
Massehnsetts. — Mr. Gorhara, aye, Mr. Ifing, aye, Mr. 
Sedgwick, aye, Mr. Dane, no. 
Rhode Island. — Mr. Manning, no. 
New York. — Mr. Haring, aye, Mr. Smith, aye. 
Nev/ Jersey. — Mr. Symmes, no, Mr. Hornblower, aye. 
Pennsylvania. — Mr. Peltit, aye, Mr. Bayard, aye. 
Maryland. — Mr. Henry, aye, Mr. Hindman, no, Mr. Har- 
rison, no, Mr. Ramsay, no. 

Virginia. — Mr. Grayson, no, Mr. Monroe, no, Mr. Car- 
rington, no, Mr. Lee, no. 

North Carolina. — Mr. Bloodworth, no, Mr. While, no. 
South Carolina. — Mr. Pinckney, no, Mr. Huger, no. 
Georgia. — Mr. Few, no. 

The motion to postpone was lost, only three States 
voting for it. Some amendments were agreed in, the 
resolution put on its passage, and rejected/ New Hamp- 
shire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylva- 
nia, and Maryland, voting no. Virginia, North Carolina, 
and South Carolina, aye. Delaware, absent. Rhode Island, 
but one member present. The vote of Georgia lost by 
the refusal of a member to vote, [Mb. Houston] who 
seemed, upon all trial questions between the different 
sections of the Union, to occupy a false position. 

Defeated, but not subdued — repulsed, but not van- 
quished — invincible in the work of justice and humanity, 
the Virginia delegation immediately commenced new 
operations, and devised new plans for the relief of the 
West. On the very next day, June 30th, a motion" was 
made by Mr. Lee, seconded by Mr. Monroe, to have one 
thousand men, of the Virginia militia, held in readiness, 
and called out, in case of necessity, for the protection of 
the West. Even this was resisted ! A motion was made 
by Mr. King, of Massachusetts, seconded by Mr. Long, 
of New Hampshire, to strike out the number ** one 
thousand." It was struck out accordingly, there being 
but five States, to wit : Maryland, Virginia, North Caro- 
lina, South Carolina, and Georgia, in favor of retaining it. 
The resolution, eviscerated of this essential part, was al- 
lowed to pass ; and thus, on the 30th day of June, in the 
year 1786, the Governor of Virginia obtained the privi- 
lege from the Continental Congress, to order some mili- 
tia in Kentucky to hold themselves in readiness to protect 
the country, in case of necessity ! Thus, at the end ot 
twelve years from the commencement of the Indian wars, 
Kentucky obtained the assent of Congress to the defence 



23 



©f herself! Tennessee never obtained that much ! She 
fought out the war from 1780 to 1792 upon her own bot- 
tom, without the assent,and against the commands of Con- 
gress. Expresses were often despatched to recall her expe- 
ditions going in pursuit of Indians who had invaded her set- 
tlements. The decisive expedition to the Cherokee town of 
NicojaCi which was framed upon the plan of Mr. Grayson, 
was, in legal acceptation, a lawless invasion of a friendly 
tribe. The brave and patriotic men who swam the Ten- 
nessee river, three quarters of a mile wide^ in the dead of 
the night, shoving their arms before them on rafts, and 
stormed the town, and drove the Indians from the gap in 
the mountain — theThermopylse of the country — and gave 
peace to the Cumberland settlements — did it with Federal 
halters round their necks : for the expedition was contra- 
ry to law. And now, in the face of history which pro- 
claims, and journals which record, these facts — in con- 
tempt of all memory that retains, and tradition that re- 
counts them, Massachusetts and the Northeast, which 
abandoned the infant west to the rifle, the hatchet, the 
knife, and the burning stake of the Indians, are to be put 
forth as the friends of the West ! Virginia, and the 
South, which labored for them with a zeal and perseve- 
rance which eventually obtained the kind protection re 
commended in the report of Mr. Grayson — the expedi- 
tion of Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne — are to be set 
down as their enemies ! And upon this settlement of the 
account, the West is now to be wooed into an alliance 
with the trainbands ot New England federalism — the 
elite of the Hartford Convention — for the oppression ot 
Virginia and the South, and the subjugation of New Eng , 
land Democracy ! History and the journals are to be 
faced down with the assertion that the protecting arm of 
the Government was forever stretched over the infant set- 
tlements of the West, the North taking the lead of the 
South in its defence and protection ! 

Two more brief references to incidents of different 
characters, but highly pertinent and instructive, wiil 
complete my selection of examples from the history of 
the Old Congress. One was a refusal, on the 25th of 
July, 1787, to treat for a cession of Indian lands either on 
the North, or the South side of the Ohio ; the other was 
a refusal, on the 2d of August of the same year, to let 
Virginia *' be credited" with the expenses of an expedi- 
tion which she had carried on in the Winter of '86-'87, 
against the Indians on both sides of the Ohio river, 
because that expedition was "not authorized" by the 
United States. The journals of the day will shew the 
purticulars, and exhibit the delegation of Massachusetts 



54 



that Nathan Dane included, who is now to be set up as 
the founder, legislator, and benefactor of the Northwest— 
as heading the opposition on both occasions. And here 
I subffiit, that, thus far, the assertion of the Senator 
from South Carolina, [Mr. Hayis-e] that the AVest had re- 
ceived hard treatment from the Federal Government, is 
fully sustained. His remark was chiefly directed to the 
hard terms on which they get lands ; but it holds good 
on the important point of long neglect, the effect of Nor- 
thern jealousy, in giving protection against the Indians. 

Janvahy 29, 1820.— Semid Bay. 

I resume my Speech, said Mr. IJ. at the point at which 
if was suspended, when I gave way to the natural and 
laudable impatience of the Senator from South Carolina, 
who sits on my right (Mr. Hatne) to vindicate himselfj 
his State, and the South, from what appeared to me to be 
a most gratuitous aggression. Well and nobly has he done 
it. Much as he had done before to establish his reputa- 
tion as an orator, a statesman, a patriot, and a gallant son 
of the South, the efforts of these days eclipse and surpass 
the whole. They will be an era in his Senatorial career 
which his friends and his country will mark and remem- 
ber, and look back upon with pride and exultation. 

Before I go on with new matter, said Mr. B. I must be 
permitted to reach back, and bring up, in the way of 
recapitulation, and for the purpose of joining together 
the broken ends of my speech, the heads and substance of 
the great facts which 1 quoted and established at the 
commencement of this reply. They are: 

1. The attempt of the seven Northern States in 1786, 
87 — 88, to surrender the navigation of the Mississippi, to 
the King of Spain. 

2. The attempt to effect that surrender, in violation of 
the articles of confederation, by the votes of seven States 
when nine could not be had. 

3. The design of this surrender, to check the growth 
of the West. 

4. The clause in the first Ordinance for the sale of the 
public lands, in the North Western Territory, which 
required the previous townships to be sold out complete 
before the subsequent ones could be offered for sale. 

5. The refus?.l to sell a less quantity than 640 acres 
together. 

6. The refusal to reduce the minimum price from one 
dollar, to sixty six and two thirds cents, per acre. 

7. The opposition, in 1786, to the motion to detach 
tv.^o companies to the Falls of the Ohio, fur the protec- 
tion of Kentucky against the incursions and depredations- 
of the Indians. 



'25 



5. The opposition to Mr. Gkatson's unanswerabiefre^ 
port, in the same year, in favor of sending- an expedition 
Into the hostile Indian country. 

9. The refusal, at the same time, to permit Virginia 
CO hold "one thousand" of her own militia in readiness to 
protect Kentucky. 

10. The refusal, in 1787, to treat for a cession of In- 
dian lands on either side of the Ohio. 

11. The refusal in the same year to let Vifginia *^he 
credited^* with the expenses of an expedition, earned on 
in the winter of '86,'87, by her troops, on both sides of 
the Ohio river for the defence of the West. 

12. The refusal for twelve y^ars, from '74 to '86, to 
send any aid to Kentucky. 

13. The refusal, throug-hout the entire war, to send 
any aid to the Cumberland settlements in Tennessee. 

14. The opposition to western emigration, as proved 
by Mr. Adams's letter. 

In all these instances, and I have omitted a thousand 
others, having- confined myself to a single and brief period 
by way of example, and that period the one when the 
termination of the revolutionary war, peace with all the 
world, and a standing force of 700 men, made it easy to 
give protection to the West ^ and when the cession of 
the western lands to the federal government for the pay- 
ment of the revolutionary debt, and the establishment of 
new States in the Northwest, devolved the business of 
Western protection upon the federal g-overnment, no less 
as an object of interest to themselves, than of duty to 
the settlers. In all these instances I have exhibited the 
States of Massachusetts and Virginia as antagonist pow- 
ers, the one opposing, the other supporting, the measures 
favorable to the West, and each supported by more 
or less of its neighboring States. 

The Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. Webster,) has 
since occupied the floor two days, and has taken no no- 
tice of facts so highly authenticated, drawn from snurees 
so wholly unimpeachable, and so pointedly conflicting 
with the denials and assertions which he has made on this 
floor. It is not for me to account for this neglect, or for- 
bearance. Rhetoricians lay down two cases in which silence 
upon the adversaries' arguments, is the better part of elo 
quence; first, where they are too insignificant to merit any 
notice ; secondly, where they are too well fortified to be 
overthrown. In such cases it is recommended as the safest 
course, to pass them by without notice, and, as if they 
had not been heard. I do not intimate which, or if either 
of these rules governed the conduct of the Senator from 
Massachusetts. I can verv well conceive of a third, and 



£6 



very different reason for this inattention — a reason which 
^vas seen in the fulness of the occupation which tlie Sena- 
tor from South Carolina (Gen. Hayne) had given him. 
True, the Senator from Massachusetts tells us that he felt 
nothing" of all that — that the arrows did not pierce — and 
makes'a question whether the arm of the Senator from 
South Carolina was strong- enough to spring the bow ? 
This he repeated so many times, and with looks so well 
adjusted to the declaration, that we all must have been 
reminded of what we have read in ancient books, of the 
brave gladiator who,receiving the fatal thrust which starts 
the cry of ''hoc ftabet" from the whole amphitheatre, in- 
stead of displaying his wound, and beseeching pity, col- 
lects himself over his centre of gravity, assumes a grace- 
ful attitude, dresses his face in smiles, bows to the ladies, 
and acts the unhurt hero in the agonies of death. 

But admitting that the arrows did not pierce : What 
then ? Is it proof of the weakness of the arm that sprung 
the bow, or of the impenetrability of the substance that 
resisted the shaft ? We read in many books of the po- 
lished brass that resists, not only arrows, but the iron- 
headed javelins, thrown by gigantic heroes. But, pierced 
or not pierced, we have all witnessed one thing ; we 
have seen the Senator from Massachusetts occupy one 
-whole day in picking these arrows out of his body i and 
to judge from the length and seriousness of this occupa- 
tion, he might be supposed to have been stuck as full 
of them as the poor fellow whose transfixed eflfigy on the 
first leaf of our annual almanacs attracts the commissera- 
tion of so many children. 

I pass by these inquh'ies,Mr. President,and come to the 
things which concern me most ; — the renewed and re- 
peated declarations of the Senator from Massachusetts, 
(Mr. W.) that fromfirst to last,fi-om the beginning to the 
ending of the chapter of this Government, all the mea- 
sures favorable to the West,have been carriedjby northern 
votes, in opposition to southern votes ; that this has al- 
ways been the case ; that there are no grounds for as- 
serting the contrary ; and that the West is ungrateful to 
desert these ancient friends in the North for a new alli- 
ance in the South. These, sir, are the things for me to 
attend to. They concern me somewhat, because I have 
asserted the contrary ; they concern the Union much 
more, because upon the propagation and belief of these 
a'osertions depends a most unhallowed combination for 
the Government of this Confederacy, commencing in the 
oppression of one half of it, and ending in the ruin of 
the whole. These considerations impel me forward, and 
impose upon me the high obligation to make out my 



2T 



''Case; to shew the South to be the ever generous friend of 
the West, — the democracy of the North the same, — and 
"the pohtical adversariss of both, to have been the unre- 
lenting- enemies of the West, until new views, and re- 
cent events, have substituted the soft and sweet game ot 
amorous seduction for the ancient and iron system of con- 
tempt and hostility.In discharging this duty,! shall confine 
myself to an elevated selection of historical facts, — to the 
great epochs, and great questions, which are cardinal in 
their nature, notorious in their existence, eventful m 
their consequences, and pertinent in their application, to 
the trial of the issue joined. On this plan, skipping over 
many minor measures, I come to the great epoch of the 
Louisiana purchase, and the resulting measures connect- 
ed with that event. 

The first point of view under which we must look at 
that great measure, Mr. President, is iis incredible value, 
nnd the absolute necessity, then created by extraordinary 
events, for making the acquisition. The West at that 
period (1803,) was filling up with people, Und covering 
over with wealth and population. It was no more the fee- 
ble settlement which the Congress of the Confederation 
had seen, and whose right, few as they were, to the free 
3iavigation of the Mississippi, had given birth to the most 
arduous struggle ever beheld in that Congress. States 
had superceded these infant settlements. Ohio, Kentuc- 
ky, and Tennessee, had been admitted into the Union : 
the territories of Indiana, Illinois, and Mississippi were 
making their way to the same station. The Western set- 
tlements of Pennsylvania and Virginia lined the left bank 
of the Ohio for half the lengtii of its course. All was 
animated with life, gay with hope, independent in the 
cultivation of a grateful soil, and rich in the prospect of 
senc^ng tjlieir accumulated productions to all the markets 
of the world, through the great channel which conduct- 
ed the King of Rivers to the bosom of the Ocean. The 
treaty with Spain in the year 1795 had guaranteed this 
right of passage ; had stipulated, moreover, for a right of 
deposite in New Orleans ,• with the further stipulation 
that, if this place of deposite should ever be denied, 
another should immediately be assigned, equally conve- 
nient for storing produce and merchandize, and for the 
exchange of cargoes between the river and the sea ves- 
sels. This right of deposite, thus indispensable, and thus 
secured, was violated in the fall of 1802. New Orleans, 
at that time, was suddenly shut up, and locked against us, 
and no other place wa>j assigned at which western pro- 
duce could be landed, left, or sold. The news of this 
event stunned the West. I well recollect the efTectupon 



28 



the country, for I saw it, and felt it in my own person, i 
was a lad then, the eldest of a widow's sons — was living" 
in Tennessee, and had come into Nashville to sell the 
summer's crop, and lay in the winter's supplies. We 
raised cotton, then, in that Southern part of Tennessee, 
and the price of fifteen cents ;^ pound which had 'been 
paid for it, and three or four hundred pounds to the acre, 
and so many acres to the hand, had filled us all with gol- 
den hopes. I came into Nashville to sell the Summer's 
crop. I offered it to the merchant — a worthy man — with 
whom we dealt. His answer, and the reason, came toge- 
ther, and gave the first intelligence of my own loss and 
the calamity of the country. Not a cent could he give 
for the cotton, for he was not a griper to take it for a 
nominal price. Not an article could be advanced upon 
the faith of it — not even the indispensable item of one 
barrel of salt. The salt and the articles were indeed fur- 
nished, and upon indulgent terms, but not upon the faith 
of the cotton ; that was recommended to be laid away, and 
to wait the course of events. This was the state of one 
and of all— of the entire country — Tennessee, Kentucky, 
Ohio, the western counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia ;; 
the territories of Indiana, Illinois and Mississippi. Every 
where, at every farm, the labor of the year was annihilat- 
ed ; the produce of the fields seemed to be changed into 
dust — struck by the wand of an enchanter which trans- 
formed cotton, tobacco, and hemp, into the useless leaves 
of the forests. The shock was incredible, the sensation 
universal, the resentment overwhelming, the ciy for re- 
dress 9bud and incessant. Congress met. That great 
man was then President, whose memory it has been my 
grief and shame to see struck at, this day, on this floor. 
The energy of the People, and the blessing of God, had 
just made Thomas Jeffekson President of these United 
States. It was a blessed election, and a providential one^. 
for the People of the West ! Upon that event depended 
the acquisition of Louisiana ! Congress met. The out- 
rage at New Orleans was the main topic in the Presi- 
dent's message. His public message to the House of Re- 
presentatives, replete with the spirit which filled the 
West, is known to the Union. His confidential message 
to the Senate is not known. It has been locked up, un- 
til lately, in the sealed book of our secret proceedings. 
That seal is now broken, and I will read the part of this 
confidential message which developed the means of re- 
covering, enlarging, and securing our violated rights,and 
asked the aid of the Senate in doing so. It is the mes- 
sage which nominated the Miiiisters to France who made 
the purchase of Louisiana. 



29 



The Message — Extract. 
*' While ray confidence in our Minister Plenipotenliary at 
Paris is entire and undirainislied, I still think tliat these ob- 
jects might be promoted by joining with him a person sent 
from hence directly, carrying with hira the feelings and senti- 
ments of the nation excited on the late occurrence, impressed 
by full communications of all the views we entertain on this 
interesting subject, and thus prepared to meet and improve, to 
an useful result, the counter propositions of the other contract- 
i:»g party, whatsoever form their interest may give to them, 
and to secure to us the ultimate accomplishment of our object : 
I, therefore, nominate R. R. Livingston to be Minister Pleni- 
potentiary, and James Monroe to be Minister Extraordinary 
and Plenipotentiary, with full powers to both jointly, or to ei- 
ther, on the death of the other, to enter into a treaty or con- 
vention wiih the First Consul of France, for the purpose of 
enlarging, and more effectually securing, our rights and inte- 
rests in the river Mississippi, and in the territoiies Eastward 
thereof." 

The reason for sending an additional Minister is here 
stated, and stated with force and clearness. Mr. Living-s- 
ton was in Pa\s, and, however faithful and able he might 
be, he was a stranger to the feelings excited by the occa- 
sion. The addition of Mr. Monroe would only make an 
embassy of two persons. Embassies of three, as in the 
mission to the French Republic in '98, and of five, as at 
Ghent, in 1815, have been seen in our country An em- 
bassy of two, in such a case as the violation of our right 
of deposite at New Orleans, and only one of them fresh 
from the United States, could not be considered extraor- 
dinary, or extravagant. The selection of Mr. Monroe 
was, of all others, the most fit and acceptable. He was 
a citizen of Virginia — that great State, which had been 
the most early, stedfast, and powerful friend of the West ; 
he was the champion of the Mississippi in that struggle 
of two years, under lock and key, when seven States un- 
dertook to surrender the navigation of that river ; he was 
■the Ambassador called for by the public voice of th-e 
South and West, and Mr. Randolph was the organ of that 
voice on the floor of the House of Representatives, when 
he declared that Mr. Jefferson could nominate no other 
person than Mr. Monroe. He was nominated. I have 
shewn the message that did it, and the reasons that influ- 
enced the President. Let us now continue our reading 
of the journal, and see hov/ that nomination was received 
by the Senators from the North and from the South. 
The Journal. 
" Wednesday, January 12th, 1893. 

"The Senate took into consideration the message of the 
President of the United States, of January 11th, nominating 



Uobert R. Livingston to be Minister Plenipotentiary, ano 
James Monroe to be Minister Extraordinary and Plempoten- 
tiary, to enter into a treaty or convention witU the First Con- 
sul ot" France, for the enl'trging and more eOtctuaiiy securing 
our rights and interests o:> the river Miss'ssippi ; and 

'•^ Jiesolved, Tiiai. they consent ai,<)- advise to the appoint- 
ment of 11". II. Livingston, agreeably to the nominalion. 

"On the (jueslion, Will the Senate consent an(5 advise to the 
nomination of James Monroe .? the yeas wer?, Messrs. An- 
derson, B:^ldvviri, Bradley, Breckeniidge, Clinton, Cocke, El- 
lery, T. Foster, Franklin, Jackson, I«ogun, Nicholas, Stone. 
Sumpler, and Wright — 15. The nays, Messrs. Dayton, 
D wight, Foster,. Hillhotise, Howard, J. Mason, Morris, Og- 
den, Oicott, Plumer, Tracy, Wells, and "White — 12." 

Fifteen for, twelve against, the nomination of Mr. 
Monroe. A majority of three votes in his favor ; which 
is a difference of two voters ; so that the nominatioa 
of Mr. Monroe, lacked but two of being rejected. 
Whence came tliese twelve ? Every one from the North 
of the Potomac, nearly aO from New England, and the 
whole from the ranks of that political party whose stir- 
vivors, and residuaiy legatees, are now in hot pursuit 
of the alliance of the West ! If any evidence is wanting 
to shew that the vote against Mr. Monroe was a vote 
against the object of his mission, it will be found, ten 
days afterwards, in the same journal upon the passage ol 
a Bill appropriating two millions of dollars to accomplish 
the purposes of the mission. On this bill the vote stood 

YEAS. — " Messrs. Anderson, Baldwin, Bradley, Bieck- 
cnbridge, Ciinlon, Coeke, Ellery, T. Foster, Jackson, Logan. 
S. T. Mason, Nicholas, Sumpter, and Wright. — 14-" 

NAYS.—" Messrs. Dayton, Dvight Foster, Hillhonse, 
Howard, J. Mason, Morris, Oicott, Pkimer, Ross, Sione, 
Wells and VVhile.— 12." 

Mr. Monroe went. Fortune was at work for the West,.. 
while nearly one half of the American Senate, and a 
large proportion of the House of Representatives, were 
at work against her. War between France and England 
was impending; the loss of Louisiana in that war was 
among the most certain of its events ; to get rid of the 
Province before the declaration of hostilities, was the 
policy of the First Consul ; and the cession to the 
Ur^ited States was determined on before our Minister 
could arrive. This was the work of Providence, or For- 
tune, which no one here could foresee ; which few are 
lawyerlike enough to lay hold of to justify the previous 
opposition to Mr. Monroe, and the vote against the two 
millions. The treaty of cession was signed by the T'irst 
Consul ; was brought home, made known to the nation,, 
and received in the South and West, with one universal 



ol 



acclaim of joy. Throughout the South and West It was 
hailed as a national benefaction, prepared by Fortune, 
seized by Jefferson, and entitled to the devout thanks- 
giving- of the American people. Not so in the north- 
east. There a violent opposition broke out against it, 
upon the express ground that it would increase the pow- 
er of the West ; and when the treaty came up for ratifi- 
cation in the Senate, it received seven votes against it, 
being so many of the same party which had voted against 
the nomination of Mr. Monroe and the appropriation of 
two millions. In the House of Representatives the mo- 
ney bill for carrying the treaty into effect was voted 
against by twenty-five members, nearly the whole from 
the geographical quarter, and from the political party, 
that had opposed the treaty in the Senate. 

The crisis was over ; the great evemt was consummated. 
Louisiana was acquired ; the navigation of the Mississip- 
pi secured ^ the prosperity of the West established for- 
ever. The glory of Jefferson was complete. He had 
found the Mississippi the boundary, and he made it the 
centre of the Republic. He re-united the two halves of 
the Great Valley, and laid the foundation for the largest 
empire of freemen that Time or Earth ever beheld. He 
planted the seed of imperishable gratitude in the hearts 
of myriads of generatiens who shall people the banks of 
the Father of Floods, and raise the votive altar, and erect 
the monumental statue, to the memory of hi7u who was 
tlie instrument of Gou in the accomplishment of so great 
a v.'ork. And great is my grief and shame to liave lived 
to see his name attacked in the American Senate ! To have 
been myself the unconscious instrument of clearing the 
way for an impeachment of his word ! and that upon the 
recollections of memories from whose tablets the stream 
of time may have washed away this small part of their 
accumulated treasures. 

Let us pause, Mr. President, and reflect for a moment, 
upon the consequences to the AVest, and to the Union, if 
President Jefferson had not seized the opportunity of 
purchasing Louisiana ; or, having purchased it, the Se- 
nate, or the House of Representatives, sliould have re- 
jected the acquisition. In the first place, it is to be re- 
membered, that France, emerging from the vortex of her 
revolution, overflowing with warriors, and governed by 
the Conqueror, who was catching at the sceptre of the 
world, was then the owner of L<»uisiana, The First Con- 
sul had extorted it from the King of Spain in the year 
1800 ; and the violation of the right of deposit at New- 
Orleans, was his first act of ownership over the new pos- 
session, and the first significant intimation to us, of the 



S^' 



new kind of neig'Iibor that we had acquired. Coternpo 
TiLneously with this act of outrage upon us, was the cor- 
centration of twenty -five thousand men, under the gene- 
ral of division, afterwards Marshal Victor, in the ports of 
Holland, for the militar}'- occupation of Louisiana. So 
far advanced were the preparations for this expedition, 
that the troops were ready to sail ; and commissaries to 
provide for their reception, were engaged in New-Or- 
leans and St. Louis, when the transfer of the province 
was annouuced. Now, sir, put it on either foot : Louisi- 
ana remains a French, or becomes a British, possession. 
In the first contingency, we must have become the ally, 
or the enemy, of France. The system of Bonaparte ad- 
mitted of no neutrals ; and our alternatives would have 
been, between falling into the train of his continental 
system, or maintaining a war ag-ainst him upon our owr 
soil. We can readily decide, that the latter would have 
been most honorable ; but it is hard to say, which would 
have been most fatal to our prosperity, and most disas- 
trous to our repubhcan institutions. In the second con- 
tingency, and the almost certain one, we should have had 
England established on our western, as well as on cur 
northern frontier ; and I may add, our southern frontier 
also ; for Florida, as the property of the ally of France, 
would have been a fair subject of British conquest in the 
war with France and Spain, and a desirable one, after the 
acquisition of Louisiana, and as easily taken as wished 
for ; the vessel that brought home the'news of the victo- 
ry at Trafalgar, being sufficient to summon and reduct? 
the places of Mobile, Pensacola, St. Marks, and St. Au- 
gustine. This nation, thus established upon three sides 
of our territory, the most powerful of maritime powers, 
jealous of our commerce, panting for the dominion of the 
seas, unscrupulous in the use of savage allies, and nine 
years afterwards to be engaged in a war with us I The 
Results of such a position^ would have been, the loss, for 
ages and centuries, of the navigation of the Mississippi . 
the permanent occupation of the Gulf of Mexico by the 
British fleet ; the consequent control of the West In- 
dies ; and the ravage of our frontiers by savages in Bri- 
tish pay. These would have been the permanent conse- 
quences, to say nothing of the fate of the late war, com- 
menced with our enemy encompassing us on three sides. 
with her land forces, and covering the ocean in front with 
her proud navy, victorious over the combined fleets of 
France and Spain, and swelled with the ships of all na- 
tions. From these calamitous results, the acquisition of 
Louisiana dehvered us ; j.nd the heart must be but little 
turned to gi'atitude and devotion, which does not adore 



the Providence that made the great man President, who 
seized this gift of fortune, and overthrew the poUtical 
party that would have rejected it. 

The treaty was ratified, and not much to spare ; one- 
third of the Senate would have defeated it, and the votes 
stood 7 to 24. But the ratification was only one half the 
business ; many legislative enactments were necessary to 
make the new acquisition available and useful, and the 
whole of these measures received more or. less of deter- 
mined opposition from the same geographical quarter 
and political party which had opposed the purchase. I 
will specify a few of the leading measures to which this 
opposition extended. 

1. The bill to enable the Senate to take possession of 
Louisiana : Nays in the Senate — Messrs. Adams, Hill- 
house, Olcott, Pickering, Plumer, Tracy. 

2. The bill to create a fund in stock for the Louisiana 
debt : Nays — Messrs. Hillhouse, Pickering, Tracy, 
Wells and White. 

3. The bill for extending certain laws of the United 
States to Louisiana : Nays — Messrs. Adams, Plumer, 
and Wells. 

Among the laws to be thus extended, were all those 
for the regulation of the Custom House, navigation and 
commerce. If it had been rejected. New Orleans could 
not have been used as an American port. 

4. The bill to establish a separate territory in Upper 
Louisiana : Nays Messrs. Adams, Olcott, Hillhouse, 
Plumer and Stone. 

5. The bill to extend the powers of the Surveyors 
General to Louisiana : Nays — Messrs. Adair, Adams, Bay- 
ard, Bradley, Gilman, Hillhouse, Pickering, Plumer, 
Smith, of Md. Smith, of Vermont, Wright— all North 
of the Potomac except one. 

This vote, Mr. President, is the connecting link be- 
tween the non-settlement clause, or the sell-out-complete 
clause, in the ordinance of 1785, and the non-survey, and 
non-emigration resolution now under debate. The three 
acts stand at twenty years apart — a wide distance in 
point of time — but they lie close together in spirit and 
intention, and announce a never-sleeping watchfulness 
over the prevention of Western settlement and Western 
improvement. 

6. Various bills for the confirmation of private claims, 
generally opposed by the like number of votes and 
voters. 

7. The bill for the admission of the State of Louisiana 
into the Union : Nays — Messrs. Bayard, Champlin, Dana, 

2* 



iU 



Gei-nlan, Gilman, Goodrich, Horsey, Lloyd, Pickering 
and Reed. 

8. The bill to authorize the State of Louisiana to ac- 
cept an enlargement of its territory : Nays — Messrs^ 
Bradley, Franklin, Gorman, Gilman, Lambert, Lloyd and 
Reed. 

This bill was passed after West Florida was re- 
duced to the possession of the United StatCG. Its object 
was to permit the State of Louisiana, if she thought pro- 
per, to include within her limits all the territory East of 
the lakes Ponchartrain and Maurepas, the river Iberville, 
and East of the Mississippi, (above that river) to the hne of 
the Missisrippi Terrltoiy, and out to Pearl river. The 
importance of it will be seen by knowing that the State 
of Louisiana, at that time, included no territory East of 
the Mississippi, but the Isle of Orleans. 

9. The resolutions of the Legislature of Massachu- 
setts, in June, 1813, asserting the unconstitutionality oi" 
the act of Congress which admitted the State of Louisia- 
na into the Union, and extended the laws of the United 
States thereto, and instructing the Massachusetts delega- 
tion in Congress to do their best to obtain its repeal. I 
will read them : 

THE MASSACHUSETTS RllSOLUTIONS. 

" Resolutions of the Legisi^iture of Massachusetts, repoi ted 
by a committee composed of Messrs. Josiah Quincy, Ashman 
and Fuller, or. the part of the Senate ; and Messrs. Thatcher^ 
Lloyd, Hall and Bates, on the part of the House, and record- 
ed in the Boston Ceutiuel, June 26tl), 1813, appended to a 
long report, viz : 

" Resolved, As the sense of this Legislature, that the ad- 
mission into ilie Union of Stales created in countries not com- 
prehended within the ongiual limits of the United Slates, is 
not authorized by the letter or the spiiit of the Federal Con- 
stitution. 

'■'■Resolved, Tliat k is the interest and duly of the people ot 
Massachusetis to oppose the admission of such States into the 
Union, as a measure tending to the dissolntioii of the confede- 
racy. 

''Resolved, That the act passed ihe eighth day of Aprii, 
1812, entitled an act for the admission of Louisiana into the 
Union, and to extend the laws of the United States to the said 
State, is a violation of ihe Constitution of the United States; 
and th:tt the Senators of this State in Congress be instructed, 
and the llepresentatives he requested to «se the utmost of their 
endeavors to obtain a repeal of the same." 

This was the solemn act of Massachusetts, governed 
by that political party, which now seeks the command of 
the West, under the name of an alliance I The Senator 
from Louisiana, who sits on my left, (Mr. Johnston) ad 



35 



iieres with a generous devotion — I call it generous, for 
it survives the downfall of its object — to that party which 
passed these resolutions, and would have kept his State 
out of the Union, and by consequence, himself out of 
this chamber. T do not reproach such g-enerosity, But I 
contend for its limitation. The heart of that Senator be- 
long's to his country, and I trust that his country will 
again possess him. He and I were once together. Our 
separation was from a point, and by slight degrees, 
though now so wide, like the travellers in the desert, 
parting from each other on two diverging lines; for a long 
time within hail — a longtime in view — at last completely- 
separated — but never way -layers nor destroyers of each 
other. I shall hope to see him return to the right line, 
and join his old companions. Nothing has happened to 
make him, or them, blush, at finding themselves again 
together. [Mr. B. here said something to Mr. Joiiex- 
STON (who sat near him) in an under tone, and in a play- 
ful mood — en hadinant — the purport of which was, that 
he would wish to see him laid on the shelf, for a while, 
notwithstanding. ] 

The admission of the State of Mississippi into the 
Union furnishes me with the next example in support of 
my side of the issue joined. It was no part of the Terri- 
tory of Louisiana, but a part of the original territory of 
the United States. Constitutional objections could not 
reach it, yet it met with the usual quantum of opposition. 
It was a Western measure, and what was worse, a South- 
western measure, and the Journals of the Senate exhibit 
eleven nays to its admission. They were Messrs. As!i- 
mun, Dagget, Goldsborough, Hunter, King, Macon, 
Mason, of N. H., Smith, Thompson, Tichenor, and Var- 
num. The name of the venerable Maccn, which appears 
in this list, may be seized upon to cover the motives of 
all the others ; but to do that it should first be shewn 
that he and they voted upon the same motive. We 
know that votes may sometimes be alike and the motives 
be different. That the vote of Mr. Macon was unfriend- 
ly to the Southwest, is a supposition contradicted by the 
acts of half a century ; that the vote of the others was 
unfriendly, may be decided by the same test, the tenor 
of all previous conduct. After all, the instance would 
go but a short distance towards proving, " that every 
measure, favorable to the West, had been carried by 
New England votes in opposition to Southern votes." 

I come now to the admission of Missouri, but do not 
mean to dwell upon it. The event is too recent — the 
facts connected with it, too notorious — to require proof, 
or even to admit of recital, here. The struggle upon 



that question, divided itself into two parts ; the first, tc 
prevent the existence of slavery in ^iissouri ; the second, 
to secure the entrance of free blacks and muiattoes into it. 
Each part of the strug-gie divided the Union into two parts, 
the Potomac and Ohio the dividing- line, with sligiit ex- 
ceptions 5 the South in favor of tlie rights of Missouri, 
the North against thern. In the ranks of the latter were 
seen all the survivors of the ancient advocates for the 
surrender of the Mississippi — all the survivors of those 
who in the Congress of the confederation opposed the 
protection of the West ; all the opponents to the acquisi- 
tion of Louisiana ; all the power of the federal party ;; 
and all the gentlemen of the Northeast who are now pay- 
ing their addresses to the West. The contest, upon its 
face, was a question of slavery and the rights of free ne- 
groes and muiattoes ; in its heart, it was a question of 
political power, and so declared upon this floor by Mr. 
King, of New York. It was a terrible agitation, and con- 
vulsed the country, and, in a certain quarter of the coun- 
try, sv,"ept all before it. The gentleman who has moved 
this resolution — the resolution now under discussion — 
was the victim of that storm, (Mr. Foot, of Conn.) He 
was then a member of the House of Representatives. He 
would not join in this crusade against Missouri, and he 
fell under the dipleasure of his constituents. But he fell 
on the side of b^jnor and patriotism, with his conscience 
and his integrity in his arms ; and the consequence of 
s-ueli a fall is to rise again, and to ascend higher than ever. 
The gentleman will appreciate the spirit in which I 
speak. My encqmiums, poor as they may be, here, or 
elsewhere, are neither profuse nor indiscriminate. I do 
ji'.stiee to the motive which has made him the mover of 
the resolution io which I am so earnestly opposed. He 
believes it to be rights and that belief, erroneous as I hold 
it to be, is the effect of that unhappy part of our political 
system wliich makes the representatives of remote States 
judges of the local measures of another State, with the 
proprieties of which they have no means of personal in- 
formation. I oppose his resolution to the utttrniost, but 
I respect his motive ; I thank !iim for his vote in favor of 
Missouri in the crisis of her struggle, and for his motion 
some days ago in favor of donations to actual settlers. 
We may contend upon points of policy ; but here, and 
clsewiiere, and above all in Missouri, if found there, 1, 
nna mine, v/ill do lionor to him and his. 

Yes, sir, the Missouri struggle is too recent to admit of 
recitals, or to require proofs. It was but the other day 
that it all occurred ; but the other day that the Represen- 
tive and the Senators of that &tate, myself one of them. 



37 



were repulsed from the doors of Congress, and deforced^ 
for one entire session, of their leg-itimate seats among- you. 
And, wliat is now incredibly strange,, what surpasses ima- 
gination, and staggers credulity, is to see myself called 
upon to deny that scene ; called upon to treat the whole 
as an opdcal illusion ; to reverse it, in fact, and submit to 
the belief that those whose blows we felt kicking and shov- 
ing us out, were the ones that drew us 'n ! and those 
whose helping hands we felt drawing and hauling us in, 
are the identical ones who kicked and shoved us out ! 

The State of Missouri, Mr President, was kept out of 
the Union one whole year for the clause which prohibited 
the future entiy and settlement of free people of color,. 
And what have we seen since i" The actual expulsion of a 
great body of free colored people from the State of Ohio, 
and not one word of objection, not one note of grief, from 
those who did all in their power to tear up the Constitu- 
tion and break the Union to pieces, because, at some fu- 
ture day,it might happen that some free blacks would wish 
to emigi'ute to Missouri, and could not do it for this clause 
in her Constitution ! The papers state the compulsory 
expatriation from Cincinnati at two thousand souls ; the 
whole number that may be compelled to expatriate from 
the State of Ohio, at ten thousand ! This is a remark- 
able event, sir, paralleled onJy -by the expulsion of the 
Moors from Spain, and the Hugonots fi'om France. Let 
me not be misunderstood : I am not complaining of Ohio. 
I admit her right to do what she did. We are informed 
that this severe measure was tlie consequence of enforc- 
ing an old law, made for tiie benefit of the slave holding 
States, and now found to be as necessary to Ohio as to 
them, and by which she has relieved herself, in thirty 
days, of the accumulated evil of thirty years. I complain 
not of this. My present business is with those who kept 
me out of my seat, kept my State out of the Union, and 
did all in their power to break up this Confederacy, be- 
cause free people of color were prohibited from coming 
to live in Missouri i 

My occupation, for the present, is v/ith these charac- 
ters — '* Les Amis des Noirs" — the friends of the blacks — 
the7i so plenty, now so scarce! Where are they ' Where 
gone ? How shrunk up ? Not even one friend, one voice 
here ! Where are the crowds that then thronged the 
public meetings ? Where the tongues which v/ere then 
so fluent ? The sighs, then so piiercing ? The eyes, then 
so vvet with tears'* All gone ; all silent ; all hushed ! 
The thronged crowd has disappeared; the fluent tongue 
has cleaved to the roof of the mouth, the piercing sigh 
has died away, and the stream.ing eye, exhausted of its 



^8 



fluid contents, has dried up to the innermost sources oi 
the lachrymal duct, and hang's over the pitiable scene, 
with the arid composure of a rainless cloud in the midst 
of the sandy desert. The Senator from Massachusetts, 
[Mr. W.] so copious and encomiastic upon the subject 
of Ohio, so full and affecting- upon the topic of free- 
dom, and the rights of freemen in that State, was in- 
comprehensibly silent, and fastidiously mute, upon the 
question of this wonderful expatriation ; an expatriation 
which sent a generation of free people from a republican 
State to a monarchical province, to seek, in a strange 
land, and beyond the icy lakes, the hospitality and pro- 
tection of a foreign king ! For them he had nothing to 
say. Their condition attracted no part of his regards. 
They are gone ; unwept and unsung, they have gone to 
experience the fate, and to renew the history, of the ab- 
ducted slaves of the Revolution, who were taken from 
their homes and their masters, collected into a settlement 
in the British province of Nova Scotia, became a pesti- 
lence there, and were exiled to Sierra Leone, to perish 
under the climate and the savages. For these people, 
and the pitiable fate that awaits them, the eloquent de- 
claimer upon the blessings of liberty in Ohio, had nothing 
to say. I thought, indeed, at one time, he was taking 
their track : it was when he was engaged in that lively 
personification of the soil of Ohio, which would not bear 
the tread of a slave's foot upon it ; which rebelled, and 
revolted, against the servile impression until it threw off 
and discharged, the base, incongruous load ; something 
like a kicking up horse, when a monkey is put upon his 
back. I thought, at that time, that the metaphorical ora- 
tor, pushing his tropes and figures to that *' bourne" from 
which some flights of eloquence have never returned, 
was going to put the climax upon the regurgitative facul- 
ties of this miraculous soil, and show us, in this great 
emigration of free blacks, that it would not bear the tread 
of a foot that ever had been in slavery ! But, suddenl}:, 
and to me unexpectedly, his ideas took another turn. In- 
stead of crossing the Lakes to pity the blacks, he cross- 
ed the river to pity the whites. He faced about to the 
South, crossed over into Kentucky, made a domicili- 
ary visit into the country — and fell, incontinently, to 
shingling the ground, and blacking the inhabitants, until 
they all looked like ebonies, and were mired, thirty la}-- 
ers deep, in conflicting land titles. When I saw that, 
Mr. President, I smote my breast, and heaved a sigh, at 
the sad vicissitude of human affections. I felt, if I did 
not cry out, for Kentucky ! Poor Kentucky ! But yes- 
terday, the loved and cherished object of all affection ! 



39 



l^e engrossing theme of every praise ! Now scanned 
and criticised ! Her faults all told, and counted ! Her 
Value cast up ! The sum found less ! and the late adored 
object, thrown •* as a worthless weed away /" 

February 1, 1830. — Third Bay. 
I was on the subject of slavery, Mr. President, as con- 
nected with the Missouri question, when last on the floor. 
The Senator from South Carolina, [Mr. Hayne,] could 
see nothing- in the question before the Senate, nor in any 
previous part of the debate, to justify the introduction of 
that topic : neither could I. He thought he saw the 
ghost of the Missouri question brought in among us : so 
did I. He was astonished at the apparition : I was not; 
for a close observance of the signs in the West had pre- 
pared me for this development from the East. I was 
well prepared for that invective against slavery, and for 
that amplification of the blessings of exemption from sla- 
very, exemplified in the condition of Ohio, which the 
Senator from Massachusetts indulged in, and which the 
object in view required to be derived from the North 
East. I cut the root of that derivation by reading a pas- 
sage frorr the Journals of the old Congress ; but this will 
not prevent the invective and encomium from going forth 
to do their office ; nor obliterate the line which was dra\yn 
between the free State of Ohio and the slave State of 
Kentucky. If the only results of this invective and en- 
comium were to exalt still higher the oratorical fame of 
the speaker, I should spend not a moment in remarking 
upon Ihem. But it is not to be forgotten that the terrible 
Missouri agitation took its rise from the '* substance of 
two speeches" delivered on this floor ; and, since that 
time, anti-slavery speeches, coming from the same politi- 
cal and geographical quarter, are not to be disregarded 
here. What was said upon that topic was certainly in- 
tended for the North side of the Potomac and Ohio ; to 
the People, then, of that division of the Union, I wish to 
address myself, and to disabuse them of some erroneous 
impressions. To them I can truly say, that slavery, in the 
abstract, has but few advocates or defenders in the slave- 
holding States, and that' slavery as it is, an hereditary in- 
stitution descended upon us from our ancestors, would 
have fewer advocates among us than it has, if those who 
have nothing to do with the subject, would only let us 
alone. The sentiment in favor of slavery was much weak- 
er before those intermeddlers began their operations than 
it is at present. The views of leading men in the North " 
and the South were indisputably the same in the earlier 
periods of our Government. Of this our legislative his- 



40 



!ory contains the highest proof. The foreign slave trade 
was prohibited in Virginia as soon as the Revokition be- 
gan. It was one of her first acts of sovereignty. In the 
Convention of that State which adopted the Federal Con- 
stitution, it was an objection to that instrument that it 
tolerated the African slave trade for twenty years. No- 
thing that has appeared since ^has surpassed the indignant 
denunciations of this traffic by Patrick Henry, George 
Mason, and others in that Convention. The clause in the 
Ordinance of '86 against slavery in the North-West, as I 
have before shown, originated in a Committee of three 
members, of whom two were from slave-holding States. 
That clause, and the whole Ordinance, received the vote 
of every slave State present, at its final passage. There 
were but eight States present, four from the South of the 
Potomac, and only one from New England. It required 
seven States to pass the Ordinance ;.it could have'beeu 
passed without the New England State, but not without 
three at least of the Southern ones. It had all four : Vir- 
ginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. Compare this 
with the vote on the Missouri restriction, when intermed- 
dlers and designing politicians had undertaken to regu- 
late the South upon the subject of slavery ! The Eeport 
in the House of Representatives, some twenty years ago^ 
against the application from Indiana, for a limited admis- 
sion of slaves, was drawn by Mr. Randolph ; the same 
Mr. Randolph whose declaration in the House of Re- 
presentatives only three years ago, that he would 
hang any man who would bring an African into Vir- 
ginia — was falsified for the basest purposes, by sub- 
stituting "Irishman" for African ! Yes, sir, slavery as 
it is, and as it exists among us, would have fewer advo- 
cates, if those who have nothing to do with it would let 
ii alone. " But they will not let it alone. A geographical 
party, and chiefly a political caste, are Incessantly at work 
upon this subject. Their operations pervade the States, 
intrude into this chamber, display themselves in innume- 
rable form.s, and the thickening of tJie signs announces 
the forthcoming of some extraordinary movement. Sir, 
I regard with admiration, that is to say v^^ith wonder, the 
sublime morality of those, who cannot bear the absti'act 
contemplation of slavery, at the distance of five hundred 
or a thousand miles off. It is entirely above, that is to 
say, it afiects a vast superiority over the morality of the 
primitive Christians, the Apostles of Christ, and Christ 
himself. Christ and the Apostles appeared in a province 
of the Roman empire, when that empire was called th^ 
Roman world, and that world was filled with slaves. 
Forty millions was the estimated number, being one- 



41 



fourth of the whole population — single individuals held 
twenty thousand slaves. A fveed-man, one who had him§ 
self been a slave, died the possessor of four thousand — 
such were the numbers. The rights of the owners over 
this multitude of human beings, was that of life and death, 
without protection from law, or mitigation from public 
sentiment. The scourge, the cross, the fish-pond, the 
den of the wild beast, and the arena of the gladiator, was 
the lot of the slave, upon the slightest expression of the 
master's will. A law of incredible atrocity made all 
slaves responsible with their own lives, for the life of 
their master ; it was the law that condemned the whole 
household of slaves to death, in case of the assassination 
of the master ; a law under which as many as four hun- 
dred have been executed at a time. And these slaves 
w^ere the white people of Europe, and of Asia Minor, 
the Greeks, and other nations, from whom the present 
inhabitants of the world derive the most valuable pro- 
ductions of the human mind. Christ saw all this — the 
number of the slaves — their hapless condition — and their 
white color, which was the same with his oWn ; yet he 
said nothing against slavery ; he preached no doctrines 
which led to insurrection and massacre ^ none which, in 
their application to the state of things in our country, 
would authorize an inferior race of blacks to exterminate 
that superior race of whites, in whose ranks he himself 
appeared upon earth. He preached no such doctrines ; 
but those of a contrary tenor, which inculcated the duty 
of fidelity and obedience on the part of the slave ; huma- 
nity and kindness on the part of the master. His Apos 
ties did the same. St. Paul sent back a runaway slave to 
his owner, Onesimus, with a letter of apology and sup- 
plication. He was not the man to harbor a runaway, 
much less to entice him from his master ; and least of all, 
to excite an insurrection. 

Slavery, which once filled the Roman world, has dis- 
appeared from most of the countries whi«h composed 
that great dominion. It has disappeared from nearly all 
Europe, and from half the States of this Union. There 
and here it has ceased upon the same principle — upon 
the principle of economy, and a calculation of interest ;; 
a calculation which, in a certain density of population, 
and difficulty of subsistence, makes it cheaper to hire a 
man than to own him ; cheaper to pay for the work he 
does, and hear no more of him, than to be burthened 
with his support from the cradle to the grave. Slavery 
never ceased any where on a principle of religion : the 
religion of all nations consecrates it. Its abolition can- 
not be enforced among Christians, on that ground, with- 



42 



otit reproaching the founder of their rehgion. Many who 
think themselves Christians, are now engaged in preach- 
ing against slavery, but they had better ascertain whe- 
ther they have fulfilled the precepts of Christ, before 
they assume a moral superiority over him, and undertake 
to do what he did not. To the politicians who are en- 
gaged in the same occupation, it is needless to give the 
like admonition. They have their views, and the success 
of these would be poorly promoted by following the pre- 
cepts of the Gospel. Their kingdom is of this world, 
and to reach it, they will do the things they ought not, 
and leave undone the things which they ought to do. 
Slavery will cease, in th.e course of some generations, in 
several of the States where it now exists, and cease upon 
the same principle on which it has disappeared else- 
where. In some parts it is not sustainable now upon a 
calculation of interest. Habit and alTection is the main 
bond. A gi'eat amelioration in the condition of the slave 
lias taken place. In most of the States they are as mem- 
bers of the family, and in all the essential particulars of 
labor, food, and raiment, they fare as the rest of the la- 
boring community. Some masters are cruel ; but the 
laws condemn such cruelty, and, what is more effectual 
than the law, is the abhorrence of public sentiment. But 
cruelty is not confined to the black slave 5 it extends to 
the white apprentice, to the orphans that are bound out, 
and to the children of the poor that are hired to the rich. 
Many of these can, and often do, tell pitiable tales of 
stinted food, and excessive work— of merciless beatings, 
brutal indignities, and precociou? debaucheries. The 
advance of the pubhc mind has been great upon the sub- 
ject of s-lavery. Let any one look back to the conferences 
at Utrecht in 1712, Avhen England was ready to continue 
the greatest of her wars for the sake of the asiento — the 
contract for supplying Spanish America with slaves — and 
see the conduct of the Virginia Assembly in 1776, and 
England herself in 1780, denouncing and punishing that 
traffic as a crime against God and man. It has not ad- 
vanced of late, but retrograded. 1 speak of these United 
States. Witness the two epochs of the ordinance of '86, 
and the admission of Missouri in 1820. Intrusive, and 
political intermeddling, produced this reverse. Such 
meddling can do no good to the objects of its real, or af- 
fected commiseration. It does harm to them. It pre- 
vents the enactment of some kind laws, and occasions 
the passage of some severe ones. It totally checks 
emancipation, and deprives the slave of instruction, as 
the most merciful way of saving him from the penalties 
of murder and insurrection, which the reading of incen- 
diary pamphlets might lead him to incur. 



I have been full, I am afraid tedious, Mr. President, on 
the subject of slavery. My apolog'y must be found in the 
extraordinary' introduction of this topic by the Senator 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster.) I foresee that this 
subject is to act a great part in the future politics of this 
country ; that it is to be made one of the instruments of a 
momentous movement — not for dividing the Union — 
something- more practicable and more damnable than that. 
The prevention of a world of woe may depend upon the 
democracy of the non-slaveholding- States. The preser- 
vation of their own republican liberties may depend upon 
it. Never was their stedfast adhesion to the principles 
they profess, and to their natui'al allies, more necessary 
than at present. To them I have been speaking ; to them 
I continue to address myself. I beseech and implore them 
to suffer their feelings against slavery to have no effect 
upon their political conduct ; to join in no combinations 
against the South for that cause ; to leave this whole bu- 
smess to ourselves. I think they can well let it alone, 
upon every principle of morals or policy. Are they 
Christians ? Then they can tolerate what Christ and the 
Apostles could bear. Are they Patriots ? Then they can 
endure what the Constitution permits. Are they philo- 
sophers ? Then they can bear the abstract contemplation 
of the ills which afflict others, not them. Are they friends 
and sympathisers ? Then they must know that the wearer 
of the shoe knows best where it pinches, and is most con- 
cerned to get it off. Are they republicans ? Then they 
must see the downfall of themselves and the elevation of 
their adversaries, in the success of a crusade, under fede- 
ral banners, against their natural allies, in the South and 
West. 

Let the democracy of the North remember, that it is 
the tendency of all confederacies to degenerate into a 
sub -confederacy among the powerful, for the government 
and oppression of tlie weaker members. Let them recol- 
lect that ambition is the root of these sub-confederacies ; 
rehgion, avarice, and geographical antipathies, the instru- 
ments of their domination ; oppression, civil wars, pillage, 
and tyranny, their end. So says the history of all con- 
federacies. Look at them. The Amphictyonic league — 
a confederacy of thirty members — received the law and 
the lash from Sparta, Thebes, and Athens. The Germa- 
nic confederation, of three hundred States and free cities, 
was governed by the nine gi-eat electorates, which ruled 
and pillaged as they pleased : the Imperial Diet being to 
them something hke what the Supreme Court is proposed 
to be here, a tribunal before which the States and free 
cities could be called, placed under the ban of the Em^ 



44 



pire, and delivered up to military' execution. The seven 
United Provinces ; the strong province of Holland alone 
deciding' upon all questions of peace and war, loans and 
taxes, and dragooning the inferior provinces into acqui- 
escence and compliance. The thirteen Swiss Cantons, 
in which the strong, aristocratic Cantons pillaged and 
ravaged the weak ones on account of their religion and 
democracy, often calling in the Dukes of Savoy to assist 
in the chastisement. Let the democracy of the North 
remember these things, and then eschew, as they would 
fly the incantations of the serpent, the syren songs of an- 
cient foes who would enlist their feelings in a concert of 
action which is to end in arraying one-half of the States 
of this Union ag-ainst the other. Have we no ambition in 
this Confederacy ? no means of enabling it to work as in 
Greece, Germany, Holland, and the Swiss Cantons ? Look 
at the fallen leaders, panting for the recovery of lost pow- 
er. Look at the ten millions of surplus in the Treasury, 
after the extinction of the public debt — at the three hun- 
dred millions of acres of public land in the new States 
and Territories — at the forty millions of exports of the 
South, and see if there be not, in the modes of dividing 
these, among certain strong States, for internal improve- 
ment, education, and protection of domestic industry,, 
ample means for acting on the feelings of avarice. Look 
at the excitements getting up about Indians, slaves, ma- 
sonry, Sunday mails, &c^ and see if there are no materials 
for working upon religion or fanaticism. 

The Senator from Massachusetts, (^Mr. W.) had a vi- 
sion, Mr. President, in the after part of his second day's 
speaking. He saw an army with banners, commanded 
by the new Major General of South Carolina, the Senator 
who sits on my right, (General Hatne) marching forward 
upon the Custom House in Charleston, sometimes ex- 
pounding law as a civilian, sometimes fighting as a Gene- 
ral. It was a pleasant vision, sir, but no more than a vi- 
sion. Now, Mr. President, I can have a vision also, and 
of a banner, with inscriptions upon it, floating over the 
head of the Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. W.) while 
he was speaking: — the words " Missouki QuEsnoif, Co- 
xoNizATiON Society, Anti-Slavebt, Georgia Indians, 
Western Lands, More Tariff, Internal Improvement^ 
Anti-Sunday Mails, Anti-Masonrt." A cavalcade 
under the banner, — a motley groupe, — a most miscella- 
neous concourse, — the speckled progeny of many con- 
junctions, — veteran Federalists, benevolent females, po- 
liticians who have lost their cas/e — National Republicans- 
all marching on to the next Presidential election, and 
chanting the words on the bamierj, and repeating, " undes 



45 



these signs we conquer.'* Did you see it, Mr. President ? 
Your look says No. But I cannot be loolted out of my 
vision. I did see something-, the shade at least of a sub- 
stance — the apparition of a real event — making- its way 
from the womb of time, and casting its shadow before. I 
shall see it again — at Philippi — and that before the 
GreekTialends — about the ides of November, 1832. 

I mean no disrespect, sir, to the benevolent females for 
whom I have found a place in this procession. Far from 
it. They have earned the place by the part they are act- 
ing in the public meetings for the instruction of Congress 
on the subject of these Georgia Indians. For the rest, I 
had rather take mychanceyin such a cavalcade, among 
these benevolent females, than among the unbenevolent 
males ; had rather appear in the feminine, than in the 
masculine gender ; had rather march in bonnet, cloak, 
and petticoats, than in hat, coat, and pantaloons. With 
the aid of the famous corset-maker, Madame Cantalo, to 
draw me up a little, I had rather trip it along as a Miss, in 
frock and pantalets, than figure as a war chief of the Geor- 
gia Cherokees, bedecked and bedizzened in all the fine- 
ry of paint and feathers. I had rather be on foot among 
the damsels than on horse among the leaders ; white, 
black, ay>,r'red. I apprehend these leaders will be on foot 
on the return march, dismounted and discomfited, un- 
horsed and unharnessed, better prepared for the flight 
than the fight, and leading the ladies out of danger after 
having led them into it. In that retreat I would re- 
commend it to the benevolent females, to place no 
rehance upon the performances of their delicate little 
feet. Their unequal steps would vainly strive to keep 
up with the ** double quick time'* mf their swift con- 
ductors. No helping hand tlien to be stretched back 
for the '* little lulus." It would be a race that Virgil 
has described, a long interval between the great heroes 
ahead, and the little ones behind. I would recommend it 
to these ladies, not to douse their bonnets, and tuck up 
their coats, |^such a race, but to sit down on the way 
side, and wait tl\^ coming of the conquerors. The new 
Major General of South Carolina will then be in the 
field in reahty ; his banner will then be seen, not advanc- 
ing upon a custom house, but pursuing the flying host of 
the National Republicans, and from him the *' benevolent 
females^' will have nothing to fear. 

I come now, Mr. President, to a momentous period in 
this Union, one well talculated to test other questions 
besides that of relative friendship to the West ; I speak 
of the late war with Great Britain. We began it for 
wrongs on the ocean, but the West quickly became its 



46 



principal theatre, and in the beginning encountered de- 
feats and disasters, which called for the aid and sympa- 
thy of other parts of the Union. I say nothing about the 
declaration of war; that was a question of opinion, and 
might have two sides to it ; but after the bloody conflict 
was began, there was but one side for Americans. The 
Senator from Massachusetts has laid down the law of 
duty to a citizen, (when the Government has adopted a 
line of policy) in accounting for his support of the tariff 
of 1828, after opposing that of 1824. The Government 
had adopted the tariff policy, he says, and thereupon it 
became his duty to support that policy. I will not stop 
to inquire how far future opposition was concluded in 
such a case. It is sufficient, for my present purpose, to 
shew that the Senator from Massachusetts has laid down 
this acquiescence in, and support of, the policy of the 
Government, in a case of common and ordinary legisla- 
tion ; after that, it cannot be denied, in the highest of 
all cases, to which it can apply, that of a foreign war, and 
that war calamitous to his own country. New England, 
more accurately speaking, the then dominant party in 
New England, opposed the declaration of war, and that 
after a leader of that party had declared upon the floor 
of the' House of Representatives, that the Ad/^^iaistration 
could not be kicked into war. She opposed the declara- 
tion ; but I leave that out of the question. The war is 
declared, it is commenced, it is disastrous ; and the hea- 
viest disasters fall upon the West. Her armies are beat- 
en; her frontier posts taken ; her territory invaded. Her 
soil is red with the blood, and white with the bones of her 
sons. Her daughters are in mourning : the land is filled 
with grief; and cries for succor pervade the Union. 
Where w^as then rehef for the West ? What was then 
the conduct of the North-east ? What the conduct of the 
South ? * * * • The Senator 

from Sottth Carolina, (Gen. Hayne,) has shewn you what 
was the conduct of the North-east. He has read the acts 
which history, and his eloquence will deliver down to 
posterity, shewing that the then dominanf?^arty in New 
England, was as well disposed to aid the enemy as to aid 
the West. He shewed that it was a main object of the 
Hartford Convention to exclude the West from the 
Union. The Senator from Massachusetts made light of 
these readings ; he called them uncanonical collects. In 
one respect a part of them were like a collect ; they 
came from the pulpit ; but instead of being prayers, un- 
less the ^orayers of the devil and his black angels be un- 
derstood, they were curses, execrations, and damnation 
to the West. The Senator from Massachusetts denied 



iheir authority, and washed his hands of them. I will, 
therefore, read him something else ; the authority of 
^vhich will not be so readily denied, nor the hands so ea- 
sily washed of. I speak of a speech delivered on the 
floor of the House of Representatives about the middle 
of the late war, when things were at their worst, and of 
certain votes upon the army bill, the militia bill, the loan 
bill, the tax bill, and the Treasury note bill. And first 
of the speech. It purports to have been delivered by 
the Senator, to whom I am now replying, in the session 
of 1813-14, on the discussion of the bill to fill the ranks 
of the regular army. 

The Sp£ech.— .-Jn Extract. 

"It is certain that the real object of this proposition to in* 
crease the military force to an exlraordinary degree, by extra- 
ordinary means, is to act over again the scenes of the two last 
campaigns. To that object I cannot lend my support. lam 
already satisfied with the exhibition. 

" Give me leave to say, sir, that the tone on the subject of 
the conquest of Canada seems to be not a little changed. Be- 
fore the war, that conqnest was represented to be quite an easy 
sfiair. The valiant spirits who meditated it, were only fear- 
i'ul lest it should be too easy to be glorious. They had no ap- 
prehension, except ti»at resistance would be so powerful as to 
{■encier the victory spletidid. * * * How happens it, sir, 
inat this country, so easy of acquisition, and over which, ac- 
cording to the prophecies, we were to have been, by this time, 
iegisbting, dividing it into States and Territories, is not vet 
ours ? Nay, sir, how happens it, that we are not even free of 
ihvasio:'. ourselves; that gentlemen i.ere cA't on us by all the 
motives of patriotism, to resist i;i the defence of our own soil, 
and pourtray before us the stale of the frontiers, by frequent 
and atiimated allusion to all those topics which the modes of 
Indian warfare usually suggest? 

" This, sir, is not what we were promised. This is not the 
entertainment to which we were invited. This is no fulfilment 
of those predictions, which it was deemed obstinacy itself not to 
believe. This is »ot the harvest of greatness and glory, the 
seeds of which were supposed to be sown, with the declaration 
of war. 

" When we ask, sir, for the causes of these disappointments, 
we are told that they are owing to the opposition rvhieh the war 
encounters, in this House and among the people. All the evils 
which afflict the country are imputed to the opposition. This 
is the fashionable doctrine, both here and elsewhere. It is said 
to be owing to opposition that the war became necessary ; and 
Giving to opposition also that it has been prosecuted with no 
better success. 

*' This, sir, is no new strain. It has been sung a thousand 
times. It is the constant tune of every weak or wicked ad- 
ministration. What Minister ever yet acknowledged, that the 
evils which fell on his country, were the necessary consequen- 



48 

CCS of his own incapacity, his own folly, or his own corruption ? 
What possessor of political power ever yet failed (o charge the 
mischiefs resulting from his own measures, upon those who had 
uniformly opposed those measures ? 

" You are, you say, at war for maritime rights and free 
trade. But they see you lock up your commerce, and abandon 
the ocean. They see you invade an interior province of the 
enemy. They see you involve yourselves in a bloody war with 
the native savages : and they ask you if you have in truth, a 
maritime controversy with the'^ Western Indians, and are 
really contending for sailors' rights with the tribes of the Pro- 
phet." 

This speech requires no comment, and will admit of 
none. Its own words go beyond any that could be sub- 
stituted. •' Valiant spirits — too easy to be g-lorious — tone 
changed — prophecies unfulfilled — frontiers invaded — as- 
sistance called for — entertainment — animated allusions 
to the modes of Indian warfare — bloody war with the 
Savages — contending with tribes of the Prophet for 
sailors rights — weak and wicked — folly and corruption — 
lend no support — satisfied with the exhibition." 

These phrases of cutting sarcasm, of cool contempt, of 
bitter reproach, and stern denial of succor, deserve to 
be placed in a parallel column with what we have just 
heard of love to the West, and of the protecting arm 
extended over her. I will not dwell upon them ; 
but there are two phrases which extort a brief re- 
mark : " Satisfied with the exhibition" — ** lend no sup- 
port." What was the exhibition of these two cam- 
paigns, the first and second of the war, to which this 
expression of satisfaction, and denial of support, extends ? 
It was this : In the Southwest, the massacre at Fort 
Mimms ; the Creek nation in arms ; British incendia- 
ries in Pensacola and St. Marks, exciting Savages to 
VY^ar and slaves to rebelHon ; the present President of the 
United States at the Ten Islands of the Coosa river, in a 
stockade of twenty yards square, with forty young men 
of Nashville, holding the Creek nation in check, and call- 
ing for support. In the Northwest, all the forts which 
covered the frontiers, captured and garrisoned by the 
enemy ; Michigan Territory reduced to the condition of 
a British province ; Ohio invaded 5 the enemy encamp- 
ed, and entrenched, upon her soil ; the British flag flying 
over it — over that soil of Ohio which, according to what 
we have just heard, could not bear the tread of a slave, 
now trod in triumph by the cruel Proctor and his ferocious 
myrmidons. This is the exhibition which the first and 
second campaigns presented in the W^est — for I limit 
myself to that quarter of the Union, the present question 



49 

X 

emg ofie of relative friendship to the West. This is the 
exhibition which the West presented — these the scenes 
which called for succor, and to relieve which the extract 
that I have read declares that none would be lent. The 
author of that speech was witisfied with this exhibition ; 
he would do nothing to change it. The political and 
geographical party with which he acted, were equally 
well satisfied, and equally determined to let things re- 
main as they were. They voted accordingly against 
every measure for the relief of the bleeding and invaded 
West ; against the bill to fill the ranks of the regular 
army — against the bill to call out the militia — against the 
bill to borrow money — against the bill to lay taxes- — 
against the bill to issue Treasury notes ! The Journals 
of Congress will shew the recoi-ded votes of those who 
now set up for the exclusive friends of the West, in op- 
position to all these bills. The reading of the yeas and 
nays, on the whole of these measures, would be tedious 
and unnecessary 5 a single set will shew how they stood 
in every instance . I select, for my example, the vote in 
the House of Representatives on the passage of the bill 

he discussion of which called forth the speech from 

/, hich an extract feas oeen made. 
THE VOTE. 
YEAS. NAYS. 

NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

Messrs. Ciiley, Hale, Vose, 
Webster, Wilcox. 

:>IASSACHUSETTS. 

Messrs. Hubbard, Psrker. Baylies, Bigelow, Bradbury, 

Biigham, D:nis, Dewey, Elv, 
King, Pickering, John Reed 
Wra. Reed, Ru,g;gles, Ward, 
Wlieaton, Wilson. 

CONXECTICUT. 

Chan»pion,Davenport,Law, 
Moseby , Pilkin,Sturges,Tag- 
gart. 

SEW YOBK. 

Averv, Fisk, Lefferls, Geddes, Grosvenor, Kent, 
Sage, Taylor. Lovett, Miller, Mofflit, Oak- 

ley, Post, Shepperd, Smith, 
Winter. 

TERMO>'T. 

Bradiey, Fisk, Skin- 

ler. 

- RHODE ISRAND. 

•Jackson, Potter. 

>rEW JERSET. 

Hasbrouck, Ward. Boyd, Cox, Hufiy„Schure» 

man, Stockton. 
S 



50 



YEAS. NAYS, 

PE3fSSTLVANIA. 

Anderson, Bard, Brown, Markell. 
Conard, Crawford, Crouch, 
Findlay, Glasgow, Griffith, 
Ingersoll, Ingham, Lyle, Pi- 
per, Rea, Roberts, Seybert^ 
Snaith, Tannehill, Udree, 
Whitehill, Wilson. 

DELAWARE. 

Cooper, Ridgely. 

MARYLAND. 

Aroher, Kent, McKim, 
Moore, Nelson, Ringgold, 
Wright. 

VIRGINIA. 

Burwell, Clopton,Dawscn, Bayly, Caperton, Lewis, 
Eppes,Ghol3ton,Hawes,Hun- ShefFey. 
gerford, Jackson, Johnson, 
Kerr, McCoy, Newton, Plea- 
sants, Rich, Roane, Smith. 

NORTH CAROLINA.. 

Alston, Forney, Franklin, Culpeper, Gaston, Pier- 

Kennedy, Macon, Mm free, son, Stanford, Sherwood, an<j 
Yancey. Thompson. — 58. 

SOTJTH CAROLINA. 

Calhoun, Chappell,Cheves, 
Earle, Evans, Gordon, Ker- 
shaw, Lowndes. 

GEORGIA. 

Barnet, Forsjlh, Hall, 
Telfair, Troup. 

KENTUCKY. 

Clark, Desha, Duvall, Mc- 

Kee, Montgomery-, Ormsby, 
Sharp. 

TENNESSEE. 

U Bowen, Grundy, Harris, 
Humphreys, Rhea, Sevier. 

OHIO. 

'; Alexander, Beale, Cald- 
w/ell, Creighton, Kilbourn, 
McLean. 

LOUISIANA. 

Robertson. — 97. 

Such were the votes of tlie North and South on the 
passage of this bill. Such were the votes of the then 
dominant party, of the North East, in that dark hour of 
calamity, and trial, to the West. Such was their an- 
swer in reply to our calls for help, — even the calls of that 
Ohio, which is now the cherished object of all affection, 
the chosen theme of highest eulogy, the worshipped 
star in that new constellation of superior planets, which 



51 



are to shed, not, their "selectest influences,'^ bui, "dis- 
astrous twilight, on half the States." It is not for me, 
Mr. President, to trace a parallel between these votes, and 
the words, and acts of the same political party, in the 
States, from which the voters came. It is not for me to 
measure the difference between the conduct which gives 
aid to the enemy, and that which denies aid to your own 
country. The question is a close one, and may exercise 
the ingenuity of those who can detect the difference be- 
tween the "West side, and the North West side of a hair." 
It is not for me to confound these votes, and the extract of 
the speech, with the words and acts of those who receiv- 
ed the successes of their own cou-ntry with grief, & Its de- 
feats with joy ; who held "soft intercourse'* with the 
enemy when he had established himself upon the soil, 
and upon the; calamities, of this Union ; who saw with 
savage exultation the cruel massacre, and dreadful burn- 
ing, of the wounded prisoners at the river Raisin, and 
gave vent to their hellish joy, from the holy pulpit, in the 
impious declaration that, "God had given them blood to 
.drink." It is not for me to confound these things 5 it may 
>:be for others to unmix them^. 1 turn to a more grateful 
•task, — to the contemplation of the conduct of the South, 
in the same season of v/o and calamity. What was thesi 
their conduct ? What their speeches, and their votes, 
n Congress ? Their efforts at home ^ Their prayers in 
he temple of God ? Time and ability v/ould fail in 
ny attempt to perform this task ; to enumeia^.e the 
:ames and acts of those generous friends, in the 
Soutli, who then stood forth our defenders and pro- 
tectors, and gave us men and money, and beat the 
domestic foe in the Capitol, v/hile we beat the for 
eign one in the field. Time, and my ability, would fail 
to do them justice ; but there is one State in the 
South, the name and praise of which, the events of this 
debate would di-ag from the stones of the We.st, if they 
could rise up in this place and speak! It is the name of 
that State upon which the vials, filled with the accumu- 
lated wrath of years, have been suddenly and unexpect- 
edly emptied before us, on a motion to postpone a land 
debate. That State whose microscopic offence in the ob- 
scure parish of Colleton, is to be hung in equipose, with the 
organized treason, and deep damnation-, of the Hartford 
{convention: That State, whose present dislike to a Ta- 
rifFwhich is tearing out her vitals, is to be made the means 
of exciting the West against the whole South: That State, 
vv-hose dislike to the tariff laws, is to be made the pretext 
tor setting up a despotic authority in the Supreme Court; 
That State, which, in the old Congress in 1785, voted 
+or the reduction of the price of Public Lands, to 



52 



jiibout one half of the present minimum 5 which, in 1786 
redeemed, after it was lost, and carried by its single 
vote, the first measure that ever was adopted for the 
protection of Kentucky, tliat of the two companies 
sent to the Falls of Ohio : That State, which in the 
period of the late war, sent us a Lowkdes, a Cheves, 
and a CALBOtijf, to fight the battles of the West 
in the Capitol, and to slay the Goliahs of the North : 
That State which, at this day, has sent to this chamber, 
the Senator (Genl. HATBrE,") whose liberal and enlighten- 
ed speech on the subject of the Public Lands, has been 
seized upon, and made the pretext, for that premeditat- 
ed aggression upon South Carolina, and the whole South, 
which we have seen met with a promptitude, energy, 
gallantry, and effect, that has forced the assailant to cry 
out, an hundred times, that he was still alive, though 
we all could see that he was most cruelly pounded. 

Memory, Mr. President, is the lowest faculty of the 
human mind — the irrational animalspossessit in common 
with man — the poor beasts of the field have memory. 
They ca» recollect the hand that feeds, and the foot that 
kicks them; and the instinct of self preservation, tells 
them to follow one, and to avoid the other. Without 
any knowledge of Greek or Latin, these mute, irrational 
creatures "fear the Greek offering presents ;" they shun 
the food, offered by the hand that has been lifted to take 
their life. This is their instinct ; and shall man, the pos- 
sessor of so many noble faculties, with all the benefits of 
learning and experience, have less memory, less grati- 
tude, less sensibility to danger, than these poor beasts ? 
And shall he stand less upon his guard,when the hand, that 
smote, is stretched out to entice ? shall man, bearing the 
image of his Creator, sink thus low ? shall the generous 
son of the west fall below hfes own dumb and reasonless 
cattle, in all the attributes of memory, gratitude, and 
sense of danger ? shall his *'Timeo Danaos" have been 
taught to him in vain ? shall he forget the things which 
he saw, and part of which he was — the events of the late 
war — the memorable scenes of fifteen years ago • The 
events of former times, of forty years ago, may be un- 
known to those who are born since. The attempt to 
surrender the navigation of the Mississippi ; to prevent 
the settlement of the West ; the refusal to protect the 
early settlers of Kentucky and Tennessee, f r to procure 
for them a cession of Indian lands ; all these trials, in 
which the South was the saviour of the West, may be 
unknown to the young generation, that has come for- 
ward since ; and with respect to these events, being un- 
informed, they may be unmindful and ungrateful. They 
did not see them 5 and, like the second generation of the 



5S 



Israelites, in the Land of Promise, who knew not the won- 
ders which God had done for their forefathers in Egypt, 
they may plead ignorance, and go astray after strange 
gods— after the Baals and the Astaroths of the Heathen ; 
but not so of the events of the last war. These they saw ! 
the aid of the South they felt ! the deeds of a party in 
the north-east, they felt also ! Memory will do its office 
for both ^ and^base and recreant is the son of the West, 
that can ever 'turn his back upon the friends that saved, 
to go into the arms of the enemy, that mocked and 
scorned him in thE^: season of dire calamity. 

I proceed to a different theme. Among the novelties 
of this debate, Mr. President, is that part of the speech 
of the Senator from Massachusetts which dwells, with 
such elaboration of argument and ornament, upon the 
love and blessings of Union, the hatred and horror of 
disunion. It was a part of the Senator's speech which 
brought into full play, the favorite, Ciceronian figure, 
of amplification. It was up to the rule in that particular. 
But, it seemed to me, that there was another rule, and a 
higher, and a precedent one, which it violated. It was 
the rule of Propriety ; that rule whick requires the fit- 
ness of things to be considered ; which requires the 
time, the place, the subject, and the audience, to be con- 
sidered 5 and condemns the delivery of the argument, and 
all its flowers, if it fails in congrument to these particu- 
lars. I thought the essay upon union, and disunion, had 
so failed. It came to us when we were not prepared for 
it, when therfe was nothing in the Senate, nor in the 
country, to grace its i.ntroduction ; nothing to give, or to 
receive, effect to, or from, the impassioned scene that 
we witnessed. It may be, it wa*i the prophetic cry of the 
distracted daughter of Priam, breaking into the Council, 
and alarming its tranquil members with vaticinations of the 
fall of Troy : But to me, it all sounded like the sudden pro- 
clamation for an earthquake, when the sun, the earth, the 
air, announced no such prodigy ; when all the elements 
of Nature were at rest, and . weet repose pervading the 
world. There was a time, Mv. President, and you, and 
I, and all of us, did see it, when such a speech would have 
found, in its dehvery, every attribute of a just and rigorous 
Propriety ! It was at the time when the Five-striped-ban- 
ner was waving over the land of the North ! when the Hart- 
ford Convention Was in session ! when the language in 
the Capitol was, " Peaceably if we can, forcibly, :f we 
must !" when the cry, out of doors, was, *'the Potomac 
the boundary ; the negro States by themselves ! The 
Alleganies the boundary, the western savages by them- 
selves! The Mississippi the boundary, let Missouri be 
governed by a Prefect, or given up as a haunt for wild 



5^' 



beasts !" That time v>as the fit occasion for this speecn 
and if it had been delivered then, either in the Hall o: 
the House of Representatives, or in the Den of the Con^ 
■vention, or in the high way, among ihe bearers and fol- 
lowers of the Five-striped-banner, what effects must it 
not have produced ? What terror and consternation 
among- the plotters of disunion ! But, here, in this loyal 
and quiet assemblage, in this season of general tran- 
quillity and universal allegiance, the whole performance 
has lost its effect for want of affinity, connexion, or rela-' 
tion, to any subject depending, or sentiment expressed 
in|the Senate ; for want of any application, or reference, 
to any event impending in the country. 

T now take leave, Mr. President, of this part of nry 
subject, with one expression of unmixed satisfaction, at a 
];)art, a very small part, of the speech of the Senatoi'. 
from Massachusetts ; it is the part in which he diselaimedj. 
in reply to an inquiry from you, sir, the imputation of a 
change of policy on the Tariff and Internal Improvement 
questions. Before that disclaimer was heard, a thousand 
%oices would have swoni to the imputation ; since, no one 
will swear it. And the reason given for not referring to 
you, for not speaking cz'you, was decent and becoming. 
You hiave no right of reply, and manhood disdains to attack 
you. 'Hiis I comprehend to have been the answer, and 
the reason, so^^romptly given by the Senator from Mas- 
fiachusetts, in reply to your inquiry. I am pleased at it 
it gives me an opportunity of saying there was sosnething 
in that speech v;-hich commands my commendation, and^. 
at the same time, relieves me from the duty of stating to 
the Senate a reason why the presiding- officer,, being Vice 
President of the United States, should not be struck at 
from this floor. Ke cannot reply! — and that disability is 
his shield in the tyes of all honorable men. 

Fr-BnuATiT 2, 1830.~Fourth Day. 
I touched incidentally, Mr. President, towards the con 
elusion of ray speech of yesterday, on ihe large — I think 
I may say despotic — power, claimed by the Senator fror.^ 
Massachusetts [Mr. Webster] for the Federal Supreme 
Covu't, over the independent States,whose voluntary unioi^ 
has established this Confederacy, I touc-lied incidentally 
upon it, and nov/ recur to it for the purpose of making v 
single remark, and presentmg a single illustration of the 
consequences of tliat doctrine. That Court is called Su- 
preme ; but this cl^.aracter of supremacy, which the Fe- 
deral Constitution bestows upon it, has reference to infe- 
rior courts — the District and Circuit Courts — and not to 
the States r.i this Union. A power to decide on the fe- 
deral Constitutionality of State laws, a7id to bind the Staie.-: 
by the deci^iou, in the manner arserted by the Senator 



55 



from Massachusetts^ is a power to govern the States. 
It is power over the sovereignty of the States 4 and that 
power includes, in its practical effects, authority over 
every minor act and proceeding of the States. The 
range of Federal authority was large under the words of 
the Constitution ; it is becoming unlimited under the as- 
sumption of implied powers. The room for conflict be- 
tween Federal, and State laws, was sufficiently ample, in 
cultivating the clear and open field of the expressed pow- 
ers; but, when the exploration of the wilderness of imphca- 
tiona is to be added to it, the recurrence of these conflicts 
becomes incessaRt and universal, covering all time, and 
raeedng at every point of State or Federal policy. The 
annihilation of the States, under a doctrine which would 
draw all these conflicts to the Federal Judiciary, and 
make its decisions binding upon the States, and subjected 
to the penalties of treason all who resisted the execution 
of these decrees, would produce that consequence. It 
would annihilate the States ! It would reduce them to 
the abject condition of provinces of the Federal Em- 
pire ! It would enable the dominant party in Congress, 
at any moment, to execute the most frightful designs. 
i<t us suppose a case — one by no means improbable — 
on the contrary, almost absolutely certain, in the event of 
the success of certain measures, now on foot : The'^late 
Mr. King, of New York, when a member of the Ameri- 
can Senate, declared upon this floor, that slavery in these 
United States, in point of law and right, did not exist, 
and could not exist, under the nature of our free form of 
Government ; and that the Supreme Court of the United 
States would so declare it. This declaration was made 
about ten years ago, in the crisis, and highest paroxysm, 
of the Missouri agitation. Since then we have seen this 
declaration repeated and enforced, in every variety of 
form and shape, by an organized party in all the non- 
slaveholding States. Since then, we have seen the prin- 
ciples of the same declaration developed in legislative 
proceedings, in the shape of committee reports and pub- 
lic debate^ m the halls of Congress. Since then we have 
had the B'Auterive case, and seen a petition presented 
from the Chair of the House of Representatives, Mr. 
JoHx W. Taylor being Speaker, in which the total de- 
siruciion of all the States that would not abandon slavery 
v.'as expressly represented as a sublime act. With these 
facts before us, and myriads of others, which 1 cannot re- 
peat, but which are seen by all, the probability of a -fe- 
deral legislative act against slavery, rises in the scale, and 
assumes the character of moral certainty, in the event of 
the success of certain designs, now on foot. So much for 
what may happen in Congress. Now for the Judiciary, 



5S 



1 have just referred to the declaration of an Ex-Senator 
[Mr. Kiife of New York] of all others the best acquaint- 
ed with the areana of his party — who was to that party 
for a full quarter of a centuiy, the law and the prophets — 
for a bold assertion of what the Supreme Court would do 
in a question of existence, or non-existence of slavery, in 
l^e United States. He openly asserted that the Supreme 
Court would declare that no such thing could exist ! It is 
not to be presumed that that aged, experienced, informed 
and responsible Senator would have hazarded an asser- 
tion of such dire and dreadful import — an assertion so 
delicately affecting the Judges then on the Bench of 
that Court — a majority of them his personal and political 
friends — and looking to such disastrous consequences to 
the Union, without probable, if not certain grounds, for 
the basis of his assertion. That he had such grounds, so 
far at least as one of the Judges was concerned, seems to 
be incontestable. A charg-e delivered to a Grand Jury by 
Mr. Justice Story, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the 
month of May, 1820 — (for the date is material — it tallieSj. 
in point, of time, with the assertion in the Senate, and 
was classed for Review, as an article of politics, in the 
North American Review, with the substance of Mr. 
King's two speeches, on the floor of the Senate, which 
■were the signal for the Missouri strife — a signal as well 
understood, and as implicitly obeyed, as the signal for 
battle in the Roman Camp, when the Red ^lantle of the 
Consul was hung on the outside of the tent:) this chargCj 
to a Grand Jury, establishes the fact of authority for the 
assertion of Mr. King, so far at least, as one of the Judges 
is concerned. But as every man should be judged by his 
own words, and not upon the recital of another, let the 
charge itself be read; let the Judge announce his own 
sentiments, in his own language. 

The Charge — Extract. 
"The existence of slavery under i-ny shape is so repuj^nauL 
to the naimal righls cf man and ihe diclales ot juslice, that it 
seems difficult to find fur it any adequate justificatson. It n\.~ 
doubtedly had its origin in times of binbarisn), and was the or- 
dinary lot of those who were conquered in v ar. It was sup- 
posed that the conqueror had a right to take tiie life of his cap- 
live, and by consequence might well hind hira to perpetunl 
servitude. But ihe position iiself on which this supposed right 
is founded is not true. No man has a right to kill his eneray, 
except in cases ot abaoiute necessity ; and this absolute necessi- 
ty ceases to exist, even in the estimation of the eonqueror him- 
self, when he has spared the life of iiis prisoner. And even if 
in such cases it were possible to contend for the right of slavery, 
as to the prisoner himself, it is impossible thai it can justly ex- 
tend to \\\s i nnoccnt oftVpring through the v^ hole line of descent. 
I forbear, however, to touch on lh:s delicate topic, not because 
it is not worthv of the most deliberate attention of all ot us ; 



57 

but it does not properly fall in my province on the present oc- 
casion." 

****** *** 

"And, gentlemen, how can we justifr ourselves, or apolo- 
gise, for an incUfferente to this subject ? Our constitutions of 
government have declared that all me7i are born free and 
equed., and have certain unalienable rights, among which are 
the right of enjoying their lives, liberty, and property, and 
seeking and obtaining their own safety and happiness. May 
not the miserable African ask, • Am I not a man and a bro- 
ther ?' We boast of our noble strength against the encroach- 
ments of tyranny, but do we forget that it assumed the mildest 
form in which authority ever assailed the rights ; and yet 
there are men amongst us who think it no wrong to condemn 
the shivering negro to perpetMnl slavery." 

* * * * * *"^ * * 

" We believe in the Christian religion. It conimantis us 
to have good will to all men; to love our neighbors asom- 
selves, and to do unto all men as we would they should do un- 
to us. It declares our accountability to the Supreme God for 
all our actions, and holds out to us a state of future i-ewards 
and punishment?, as the sanction by which our conduct is to 
be regardt f. And yet there are men calling themselves 
Christians, who degrade the negro bv ignorance to a level with 
the brutes, and deprive him of all the consolations of relii;ion. 
He alone, of all the rational creation, ihey seem to think, is 
to be at once accountable for his actions, and yet his actions 
are not to be at his own disposal ; but his mind, his body, and 
his feelings, are to be sold to perpetual bondage." 

We will take the case of slavery then as the probable, 
and in the event of the success of certain designs now 
on foot, as the certain one, on which the new doctrine of 
judicial supremacy over the States, may be tried. The 
case of the Georgia Cherokees is a more proximate, and 
may be a precedent one; but,as no intimation of the possi- 
ble decision of the court in that case, has been given,! shall 
pretermit it, and limit myself to the slavery case, in which 
the declaration of Mr. King-, and the charge of one ofthe 
Judges leaves me at liberty to enter, without guilt of intru- 
sion, into that sanctum sanctorum of the Judiciary — the 
privy chamber of the Judges — the door of which has been 
flung wide open. Let us suppose then that a law of Con- 
gress passes, declaring that slavery does not exist in the 
United States — that the States South of the Potomac and 
Ohio, with Missouri from the West of the Missiswppi, 
deny the constitutionality of the law — that the Supreme 
Court takes cognizance of the denial — commands the 
refractory States to appear at its Bar — decides in favor 
of the law of Congress, and puts forth the decree which, 
according to the nev/ doctrine, it is Treason to resist ! 
What next ? Either, acquiescence or resistance, on the 
part of the slave States. Acquiescence involves, Jon the 
part of the States towards this Court, a practical exem- 



53 



plitication of the old slavish doctrines of passive oDedi - 
ence and non-resistance which theSacheverells of Queen 
Anne*s time preached and promulgated in favor of the 
King- ag-ainst the subject 5 with all the mischief, super- 
added, of ttti-mng loose two nVjKLons of slaves here, as ^e 
Frencli national convention and their ag-ents, Santhonax 
and La Croix, had turned loose the slaves of the West 
India Islands. Resistance ir.curs all the guilt of treason 
and rebellion ? -draws down upon the devoted States the 
troopsand fan-atics of the P'ederal Government, arms all the 
neg-roes according to the principle declared in D'Aute- 
rive's case, arid calls in, by way of attending to the wo- 
men and children, the knife and the hatchet cf those 
Georgia Cherokees which it is now the organized policy 
of a political pai;ly, to retain, and maintain, in thebosoni 
of the South. 

We have read, and heard, much, Mr. President, ot 
late years of the madness and violence of the people—* 
the tyranny and oppression of military leaders : but we 
have heard nothing of judicial tyranny, judicial oppres- 
sion, and judicial subserviency, to the will, auiJ. ambitionj 
of the King or President of a country. Nothing has been 
said on this branch of the subject, and, yet, nothing that I 
have ever seen, or read of, has sunk so deep upon my mind 
as the history of judicial tyranny, exemplified in the sub- 
mission of the Judges to the will of those who made them. 
My very early reading led me to the contemplation of the 
most impressive scenes of this character, which the his- 
tory of any country affords : I speak of the British State 
Trials, which I read at seven or eight years old under 
the direction of a m.other, then a very young, now an aged 
widow. It was her wish to form her children to alove of 
LiHERTT, and a hatred of Tyrankt, and, with her, I had 
V. cpt over the fate of Raleigh, and Russell, and Sydne} , 
and I will add, the Lady Ali:;e Lyle, before I could re- 
alize the conception that they belonged to a different 
country,and a different age, from my own . I drank deep at 
that fountam ! I drew up repeated, copious and overflov.'- 
ing draughts of grief and sorrow, for suffering victims — of 
resentment, fear, and terror, for their cruel oppressors. 
Nothing which I have read in history since, not even the 
massacres of Marius and Sylla, nor the slaughters of the 
FrenchRevolution,have sunk so deep upon my mind as the 
scenes which the British State Trials disclosed to me ; the 
view of the illustrious of the land seized upon the hint of 
the King, cari-ied to the dungeon, from the dungeon to 
the court, from the court to the scaffold ; there, the body 
half-hung, cut dov/n half alive, the belly ript open, and 
the bowels torn out, the limbs divided and stuck over 
gates, the property confiscated to the King, the blood of 



59 



the family attainted, and widows and orphans turned out to 
scorn and want. Nothing which I have ever read equals 
the deep impression of these scenes ; partly because the}*- 
came upon my infant mind, more, because It was a cold- 
blooded business, a heartless tyranny, in which the judges 
acted for the King, without passions of their own, and are 
stript of all the extenuations which contending parties 
claim for their excesses when either gets the upper hand 
in tlie crisis of great sfi^iiggles. True, these scenes of ju- 
dicial tyranny and -ioppression existed long since ;_ but 
where is the modern instanc^of judicial opposition to the 
will of the King, or Presid'enlV.of the country for the time 
being ? Are there five instances in five centuries ? Are 
there four? three? two? one ? No, not one! The 
nearest approach to such opposition, in the history of the 
British Judiciary, is the famous case of the ship money, 
when four Judges, out of twelve, ventured an opinion 
against the Crown. In our own country no opposition 
from the Bench has gone that length. The odious, and 
notorious, sedition law was enforced throughout the land 
by Federal Judges. Not one declared against it ; and if 
a civil war, in that disastrous period between the Presi- 
dents Washington and Jefferson, had depeixled upon the 
judicial enforcement of that act, we shoutJhave had civil 
war. We have heard much, Mr. President, of the inde- 
pendence of the Judges, but sinoe, about eight hundred 
years ago, when the old King' Alfred hung four and forty 
of them in one year, for false judgments, thei^e have been 
but few manifestations of judicial independejice in refer- 
ence to the power from which they derive their appoint- 
ment. Since that time, the judges and the appointing 
power have usually thought ahke in all the cardinal ques- 
tions which affect that power. Tins may be accounted 
for without drawing an inference to the dishonor of the 
Judge, and as it will answer my purpose just as well to 
place the account upon that foot,.! will cheerfully do it. 
I will say, then, that Kings arid P>eSdents, having the 
nomination of judges, forever have cliosen, and upon all 
the principles of human action with which I am acquaint- 
ed, forever will chuse these high judicial officeVs from the 
class of men whose political creed corresponds with their 
own. Tliis is enough for me ; it is eiiough for the illustra- 
tion of the subject which m e have in hand. Supposing, then, 
a certain design, now on foot, to succeed ; supposing, 
some four or eight years hence, a new creation of judges 
to come forth, either under a new law for the extension 
of the Judiciary, or to fill up vacancies; supposing the doc- 
trine to be established which is now announced by the 
Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Websteh,] and that 
Court haste pass upon a slavery law, or an Indian law, which 



60 



the States hold to be void, and the Coart decree it to be 
binding, where is then the legitimate conclusion of the 
gentleman's doctrine ? Passive obedience and non-re. 
sistance to the Supreme Court, and the President that 
made it, or civil war, with Indians and Negroes for the al- 
lies of the Federal Government. Sir, I do not argue this 
point of tlie debate ; I have a task before me — the rectifi- 
cation of the assertions of the Senatorfrom Massachusetts — 
which I mean to execute. I have turned aside from that 
task to make a remark upon the doctrine, and to illustrate 
it hy an example, which would make the Supreme Fede- 
ral Court despotic over the States. I return to my task, 
with repeating the words of him, [Mr. Randolph,] whose 
words will be the rallying cry of liberty and patriotism in 
ages yet to come : I repeat then, but without the 
magical effect of that celestial infusion which God vouch- 
safe^ to him, — divine elocution — the words which, three 
months ago, electrified the Virginia Convention : " The 
chapter of Kings, in the Holy Bible, follmvs next after the 
chapter of Jadges.'* 

I will now, Mr. President, take up the instunces, I 
believe there are but few of them, and that I can make 
short work of them, quoted by the Senator from Massa- 
chusetts (Mr. W.) in support of his assertion, that all the 
measures favorable to the West, hare been carried by 
Northern votes in opposition to Southern ones. He as- 
serted this to be the case from the beginning to the end- 
ing, from the first to the last, of the chapter of this Gov- 
ernment ; but he did not go back to the beginning of the 
chapter, nor even to the middle of it, nor in fact, further 
than some ten leaves of it. He got back to the year 
1820, — ^just to the' edge of the Missouri question, but not 
a word of that, — and began with the reduction of the 
price of Public Land from ?2, to $1 25 per acre. That 
he proclaims as a Western measure, and dwells upon it, 
th-atNew England gave thirty -three votes in favor of that 
reduction, and the four Southern States but thirty two I 
Verily, this is carrying the measure ia opposition to the 
votes of the South, in a new and unprecedented sense of 
the word. But was it a western measure i* The history 
of the day tells us no ; that the Western members were 
generally against it, because it combined a change of 
terms from the credit, to the ready money system, with 
the reduction. This made it unacceptable to the Wes- 
t rn members, and they voted against it almost in a body. 
The leadiog men of the West opposed it ; Mr. Clay in h 
speech, with great earnestness. Mr. Trim.ble, and Mr. 
Metcalfe, of Kentucky, voted against it I both the Ken- 
tucky Senators did the same ; both the present Senators 
from Indiana ; the Representative from Illinois, and many 



61 



otliers. The opposition, though not universal, was g'e- 
neral from the West ; and no member lost the favor of 
his constituents on that account. The Senatoi**s first 
instance, then, of New England favor to the West, 
happens to be badly selected. It fails at both points of 
the argument ; at the alleged victory over the South, in 
behalf of the West, and at the essential feature of favor 
t6 the West itself. This is a pity. It knocks one leg off 
of the stool which had but two legs to it from the be- 
ginning. The Senator had but two instances, of New 
England favor to the West, prior to the cooing and bill- 
ing ©f the Presidential Election in the House of Repre- 
sentatives in 1825. One of these is gone; now for the 
next. This next one, sole survivor of a stinted race, 
is the extension of credit to the land debtors in the 
year 1821. This I admit to be a measure of cherished 
importance to the West. Let us see how the rival par- 
ties divided upon it. The Senator from Massachusetts 
stated the division loosely, and without precision as to 
the numbers. He said that New England, with 40 mem- 
bers in the House of Representatives, gave more affirm- 
ative votes than the foUr Southern States with their 52 
members. How many more he did not say ; and that 
want of precision, induced me to cause the matter to be 
looked into, and the result appears to be that in the list 
of yeas. New England, on that occasion, beat the South 
t\vo votes, and in the list of nays, she beat three, votes , 
that is to say, she gave two rotes more than the South 
did for the passage of the bill, and three votes more than 
the South against the passage of it ! This leaves a ma 
jority of one in favorof the South, and so, off" goes the 
other leg of tlie two legged stool ; and the genator from 
Massachusetts, according to mjr arithmetic, is flat upon 
the ground. 

I think, Mr. President, it was in the triumph of his 
soul at having two instances, and those the ones I 
have dissected, in which New England gave favorable 
votes to the West, prior to the honey-moon of the Presi- 
dential election of 1825, that the Senator from Massachu- 
setts, broke out into his ^Hime whex," — "manner how," 
and ''cause wht," — which seemed to have been receiv- 
ed as attic wit "by some quantity of barren spectators," 
that chanced to be then present. I think it was in re- 
ference to these two instances that the Senator from 
Massachusetts made his address to the Senator from S. C. 
(Genl. Hatbte) and still ringing the changes upon the 
when, the hoWy and the why, said to the Senator from 
S. C. that if this did not satisfy him of the disinterested 
affection of the North East, to the West, prior to the 
scenes of soft dalliance, which accompanied the Presiden- 



62 



tial election of 182if, that he did not know how he eve/ 
would be satisfied. Good, sir, let us close a bargain, — ^ 
pardon the phrase, — on that word. The Senator fron^ 
Massachusetts knows of nothing- to prove affection in the 
North East to the West, prior to the sweet conjunction 
and full consummation of 18 J5, except these two instances. 
They seemed to be but a poor dependence, — a small 
plaster for a large sore, — when he brought them forward: 
What are they now ? Reduced to nothing, — literally 
nothing, — woise than nothing, — an admitted acknow- 
ledgment that the case \\ anted proof, and that none can 
possibly be found ! 

But the tariff ! the tariff ! That is a blessing, at least, 
which the West must admit it received from the North- 
east ! Not the tariff of 1824 ; for against that, it is avow- 
ed by the Senator from Massachusetts that the New Eng- 
land delegation voted in sohd column. It is the tariff of 
1828 to whicli he alludes, and for the blessings of which 
to the West, he now claims its gratitude to the Northeast. 
Upon this claim I have two answers to make : first, that 
this instance ©f affection to the West, is posterior to the 
election of 1825, and fails under the qualification of the 
entire system of changes which followed, consequentially, 
upon the approximation, and conjunction, of the planets 
which produced that event. Secondly, that almost the 
only item in that tariff of any, real value to the West — 
the increased duty on hemp — was struck at from the 
Northeast, and defended from the South. The Senator 
from Massachusetts, to whom I am now replying, himself 
moved to expunge the xilause which proposed to grant 
us that increase of duty. True, he proposed to substitute 
a nominal and illusory bounty on the insignificant quantity 
of hemp used on the ships of war of the United States, 
being the one twentieth part of what is used on the mer- 
chant vessels, and undertook to make us believe that the 
one twentieth part of a thing \\»as more than the whole, 
He could not make us beheve it. We refused his boun- 
ty ; we voted 18 against him, being every Senator from 
the West ; New England voted'ten out of twelve against 
us ; the South voted eight out of eight for us ; and the 
increased duty on hemp was saved ; saved by that South, 
in opposition to that New England, which the Senator 
from Massachusetts has so often declared to be the frieiid 
of the West, and to have carried every measure favorable 
to it in opposition to the votes of the South ! 

Internal improvement was the last resort of the Sena- 
tor's ingenuity, for showing' the affection of the North 
east to the West. It was on this point that his appeal to 
the West, and >calls for an answer, were particularly ad- 
dressed. The West will answer ; and, in the first place 



6S 



will show the amount, in value, in money, of the fsivors 
thus rendered, in order to ascertain the quantity of 
gratitude due, and demandable, for it. On this point 
we have authentic data to go upon. A resolution of the. 
Senate, of whick I was myself the mover, addressed to 
the ex-administration in the last year of its existenc-e, calL 
ed upon the then President to exhibit to the Congress 
a full statement of all the money expended by the Fede- 
ral Government, from 1789 to 1828, in each of the 
States, upon works of internal impsovement. The re- 
port was made, authenticated by the signatures of the 
President, Mr. Adams, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
Mr. Rush, and several heads of bureaus. It is No. 69 , 
of the Senate Documents for the session 1828 — 1829, 
and at page 13 of the Document, the table of recapitu- 
lation is found, which shows the amount expended in 
each State. Let us read some items from it. 

THE TABLE. 

1. Kentucky $90,000 

^ 2. Tennessee- 4,200 

3. Indiana -... nothing. 

4. Illinois 8,000 

5. Mississippi 23,000 

6. Missouri nothing, 

7. Louisiana do. 

A most beggarly account, Mr. President ! About 
$ 125,000 In seven Western States, up to the end of that 
Administi'ation, which assumed to be the exclusive 
champion of internal improvement. A small sum truly, 
for the young and blooming West to take, for the sur^ 
rendei' of all her charms, to the ancient and iron-hearted 
enemy of her name. Ohio, it is not to be dissembled, 
has received something more ; but that depends upon 
another principle, the principle of governing the AVest 
through her. 

But the Cumberland road ; that great road, the con- 
struction of which, as far as the Ohio river, cost near two 
millions of dollars. Sir, the man must have a poor con- 
ception of the West, who considers the road to Wheeling 
as a Western object, to be charged upon the funds and 
the gratitude of the West. To the Eastern parts of Ohio 
it may be serviceable ; but to all beyond that State, it is 
little known except by name. A thousand Eastern people 
travel it for one farmer or mechanic of Indiana, Illinois, 
Missouri, Kentucky, or Tennessee. It is, in reality, more 
an Eastern than' & Western measure, built in good part 
with Western money, taken from the Western States, as 
1 humbly apprehend, in violation of their compacts with 
the Federal Governm.ent. Thesacompacts stipulate that 
two per cent, cf the nett proceeds of the sales of the 



64 



public lands shall be laid out by Congress in making 
roads, or canals "to" the States, not towards them. The 
laws for building the Cumberland road have seized upon 
all this fund, already amounting in the four Northwestern 
States to $ 326,000, and applied it all to the Cumberland 
road. The same laws contain a curious stipulation, not to 
be found in any other law for making a road, >vhich stipu- 
lates for the future reimbursement, out of the two per 
cent, fund, of all the money expended upon it. This 
triuly is a new way of conferring a favor, and establishirvg 
a debt of gratitude ! But when did the New England 
votes in favor of this road, and other Western objects, 
commence. How do they compare before, and since the 
Presidential election of 1825 ? Let the journals tell. Let 
confronting columns display tlie contrast of New England 
votes, upon this point, before and after that election. 

THE CONTRAST. 
BEFORE '25. SIXCK '25. 

1. A<jiil8ih,l816. To post- 1. Pebiuary24 h, 185^5. Ma- 
pone bili to construct roads tum to po5t[)Oiie apptoprialion 
and canals — veas, 7 out of 10. tor Cumberiaiul load — yeas, 5 

cut of 12. 

2. March 5th, 1816. Dill lo 2. March 1st, IS2G. Bili to 

i-elieve sell IcfS on public lands lepaif Cuinbei land roiid 

by allowing them to enlcr the nays, 2 out ofl 2. 

l;<tnds, kc. — nav?, 8 out of U>. 

3. Jj^nnary 29lh, 1817. Hill .S. January 24lh, 1827. Bill 
to admit .Mississippi as a Siale extending Cumberland road — 
into the Union^nays, 7 out of nays, 5 out of 12. 

10. 

i. May 19lh, 1824. Bill to- 4- March 2S..h, iSiS: Bill 
improve the navigation of the to give land to Kenyc^u Cioi- 
Ohio rtvef — na\3. 7 out oi" 12. lege— 3 out of 12. 

5. April 24;h, 1824. BiUfor 5. December, 1 8 -S Bill for 
surveys of roads, Sec. — uays, 9 making oomptnsai ion for In- 
outofl2. diau dtpredati'^r.s in .Missou- 

!i — yeas, 4 out of 12. ' 

Yes, Mr. President, the Presidential election of 1825 
was followed by a system of chang-es. There seems to 
have been a surrender and sacrifice of principles, on that 
occasion, somewhat analogous to the surrender, and mur- 
der, of friends which followed the conjunction of An- 
thony, Lepidus and Cesar. It would seem that soir.e 
guardian genius had whispered, the " Tariff, Internal Im- 
provement, and Slavery, are the questions to govern this 
-Union : Now let us all agree, and throw up old scruples, 
and work together upon Slavery, Tariff, and Inirernal Im- 
provement." They did throw up ! Old scruples flew 
off like old garments. Leading politicians came " to the 
right about :" the rank and file followed ; and the con- 
sequence was the confronting votes, and conduct, which 
fiye years of explanations and justifications leave at the 
exact point ut which they began. 



65 



The canal across the Alleghanies is mentioned. I ut- 
terly disclaim and repudiate that canal as a Western ob- 
ject. And here, Mr. President, I take up a position 
which I shall fortify and establish on some future occa- 
sion. It is this : That every canal, and every road, tend- 
ing- to draw the commerce of the Western States across 
^e Alleghany mountains, is an injury to the people of 
the West. My idea is this : That the great and bulky 
productions of the West will follow the course of the 
waters, and float down the rivers to New Orleans ; that 
our export trade must, and will, go there ; that this city 
cannot buy all, and sell nothing ; that she must have the 
benefit of the import trade with us ; that the people of 
the West must buy from her as well as she from them ; 
that the system of exchange and barter must take effect 
there ; that if it does not, and the West continues to sell 
its world of productions to New Orleans for ready money, 
and carries off that money to be laid out in the purchase 
of goods in Atlantic cities, the people of the West are 
themselves ruined ; for New Orleans cannot stand such a 
course of business ; she will fail in supplying the 
world of money which the world of produce requires ; 
and the consequence will be the downfall of prices in 
every article. This is somewhat the case now. New 
Orleans is called an uncertain market 5 her prices for 
beef, pork, flour, bacon, whiskey, tobacco, hemp, cotton, 
and an^hundred other articles,are compared with the prices 
of like articles in the Atlantic cities, and found to be less ; 
and then she is railed against as a bad market ; as if these 
low prices was not the natural and inevitable effect of 
selling everything, and b,'iying nothing, there. As to the 
idea of sending the products of the West across the Al- 
leganies, it is the conception of insanity itself! No rail 
roads or canals will ever carry them, not even if they do 
it gratis ! One trans-shipment, and there would have to 
be several, would exceed the expense of transportation 
to New Orleans, to say nothing of the up-stream work of 
getting to the canal, or rail way •, itself far exceeding the 
whole expense, trouble, and delay of getting to New 
Orleans. Besides, such an unnatural reversal of the 
course of trade would be injurious to the Western ci- 
ties — to Cincinnati, liOuisville, St. Louis, and to many 
others. It would be injurious and fatal to our inland na- 
vigation — the steamboats of the West. They are our 
ships; their tonnage is already great, say 300,000 tons; the 
building of them gives employment to many valuable 
trades, and creates a demand for many articles which the 
country produces. To say nothing of their obvious and 
incredible utility in the transportation of persons, pro- 
duce, and merchandize, each steam-boat has itself be- 



66 



come a market, amoving" market that comes to the door 
of every house on the rivers, taking* oif all its surplus 
fowls, and vegetables ; all its surplus wood ; the expendi- 
ture for this single object, wood, in the past year, in two 
calculations made for me, ranged between nine hundred 
thousand, and one million of dollars. No, sir, the West is 
not going to give up their steam boats, — their ships, not or' 
the desert, but of noble rivers. They are not agoing to 
abandon the Mississippi, mare nostrum^ — our sea, — for 
the comfort of scaling the Alleghany mountains with 
hog-sheads of tobacco, barrels of whiskey, pork, and 
flour, bales of hemp, and coops of chickens and turkeys, 
on their backs ! We are not agoing to impoverish New 
Orleans, by seUing our produce to her, and buyijig our 
merchandize elsewhere, and in that impoverishment 
committing suicide upon ourselves. Nor am I going to 
pursue this subject, and explore it in all its important 
bearings at this time ; I have that task to perform ; but it 
will be reserved for another occasion. 

I resume the subject of Internal Improvement. I say, 
and I say it with the proof in hand, that this whole busi- 
ness has been a fraud upon the West. Xook at its pro- 
mise and performance. Its promise was, to equalize the 
expenditure of public money, and to counterbalance, 
upon roads and canalg in the West, the enormous appro- 
priations for fortifications, navy yards, light houses, and 
ships, on the Atlantic board; its performance has been, to 
increase the inequality of the expenditure ? to fix near- 
ly the whole business of Internal Improvement on the 
east of the Alleghany mountains ; to add this item, in fact, 
to all the other items of expenditure in the East ! Such 
was the promise ; such has been the performance^ 
Facts attest it ; and let the facts speak for themselves. 

THE FACTS. 

1. Cumberland road to Wheeling. § 2,000,000 

2. Delaware Breakwater, (required) 2,500,000 

3. Canal over the Allearany, (subscribed) 1,000,000 

4. Baltimore Kail Road"; (demanded) 1,000,000 

5. Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, 450,000 

6. Nantucket harbor, (demanded) 900,000 
Here we go by the million, Mr. President, while the 

West, to whom all the benefits of tliis system were pro- 
mised, obtains with difficulty, and somewhat as a beggar 
would get a penny, a few miserable thousands. But, 
sir, it is not only in the great way, but in the small way 
also, that the West has been made the dupe of this delu- 
sive policy. She has lost npt only by the gross, but by 
retail. Look at the facts again. See what her partner 
in this work of Internal Improvement — the Northeast — 
which commenced business with her in 1825, has since 



received, in the small way, and upon items that the West 
never heard of, under thjs head of Internal Improvement, 

THE FACTS AGAIK : 

1. PreservationofLittle Gull Island, ^??'nftO 

2. Preservation of Smutty Nose Island, lo,OW 

3. Preservation of Plymouth beach, ^J.uuo 

4. Preservation of Islands in Boston harbor, 6o,0UU 

5. Improvement of the Hyannis harbor, 1U,WU 

6. improvement of Squam and Gloucester, 6,0JU 

7. Preservation of Deer Island, . »^.^^^ 

8. Remorin.g a Sand bar m Merrmiac river, o^,WV 

9. Building a pier at Stenington, j^,^^^ 
- 10. Making a road to Mars' hdl, 5^,uyv/ 

Near S 400,000, Mr. President, actually paid out m this 

small way, and upon these small items, in New Englanc^ 

'^hile sev;n Statis in the West, up to the ft day of the 

. Coalition administration, had had expended within then 

limits, for all objects, great -"^.^^^.^VtllT/oOO And 
the light-house at Natchez inc^^^ed-but $125,000. And 
this tir is the New England help for which the Senatoi , 
f'or^ mLs". CMr. W.) s'tood up here, challenging ^^^^^ 
gratitude of the West ! But this is not all ; the future 
x^s still to come ; a goodly prospect is ahead ^^^^ ^^J ^^ 
take a view of it. The late ^dmmistration m one^f its 
communications to Congi'ess, gave in %lf 9^ P^^J^J^^'^ 
lected for future execution. I will recite a few ot ttiem. 

rVLB mOJECTS. 

1. Improvement at Saugatuck. ^ 

2 do. at Amounisuck. "^ 

S. do. at P^sumsic. 

4] do. al Winnispisseogee. 

5] do. at Piscataqua. 

6 do. at the Ticonic Falls. 

7. do. at Lake Mempliramagog . 

g] do. at Conneaui creek. 

9. do. at Holmes' hole. 

10. do. at Lovejoy's narrows. 

11. do. at Steele's ledge. 

12. do at Cowhegan 

13. do. at Androscoggin. 

14. do. at Cobbiesconte. 

15.*'* ''do." at Ponceaupechaux, a/m5, Soapy-Joe 

Such, Mr. President, are a sample of the projects held" 
in abeyance by the late administration, and to be execut- 
ed' in future. Thev were selected as national objects . 
—national '.—and not a man in the two Americas, outside 
of the nation of New-England, who can take up the list, 
and tell where they are, without a prompter or a gazet- 
teer. And now, sir. what-are the results of this partner- 



68 



ship, of five years standing, between the West and North-- 
East, in the business of internal improvement ? — ;First :: 
Nothing, or next to nothing, for Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois, Indiana, and 
Missouri. — Secondly : Eight or nine millions of dollars 
for large objects, east of the Allegany mountains. — 
Thirdly : Near $400,000 for small neighborhood objects, 
in New-England. — Fourthly : A selection of objects in 
the north east, for future national improvement, the veiy 
names of which are unknown in the neighboring States. 
These are the results. Let any one weigh and consider 
them, and say whether this business of internal improve- 
ment, has not been a delusion upon the West ; if our 
partnersin the East have not kept the loaf undertheir own 
arm, and cut off two or three huge huncks for themselves 
for every thin and narrow slice which they threw to us ? 
What is worse, that is to say, what is truly mortifying to 
our pride, is, that we are not allowed to chuse for our- 
selves. It is in vain that we contend, that western ob. 
jects should be somewhere in the valley of the Mississip- 
pi ; our partners, assuming the office of guardians, tell 
us it is a mistake ; that every true, genuine, native-born, 
full-blooded western improvement, must begin upon the 
Atlantic coast, and if one end of it points towards the 
setting sun, that is enough. It is now six years, Mr. 
President, since I made a movement upon an object ac- 
tually western ; one which, being completed, will pro- 
duce more good for less money, according to my belief, 
than any other of which the wide extent of this confede- 
racy is susceptible. It is the series of short canals, sir, 
amounting in the aggregate to twenty-seven miles, which 
would unite New-Orleans and Georgia — which would 
connect, by an inland steam -boat navigation, safe from 
storms, pirates, privateers, and enemies fleets, the Cha- 
tahooche and the Mississippi, the bays of Mobile, Pen- 
sacola, and St. Marks ; and enable the provisions of the 
western country to go where they are exceedingly want- 
ed, to the cotton plantations on the rivers Am- 
ite, the Pearl, and Pascagoula, in the State of Missis- 
sippi ; the Tombecbee and Alabama rivers, in the 
State of Alabama ; the Conecuh and Escambia, in West 
Florida; the Chatahoochee, for five hundred miles up it, 
on the dividing line of Georgia and Alabama. The Sena- 
tor from Louisiana, who sits on my left, (Mr. Johnstoin-,) 
moved the bill that obtained the appropriation for sur- 
veying this route, four years ago ; the Senator from the 
same State, who sits on my right, (Mr, Livingston) has 
sent a resolution to the Road and Canal Committee, to 
have the work began ; and the fate of this undertaking 
may illustrate the extent to which the voice of the West 



69 



:.an go, in selecting objects of improvement within its 
own limits, and for itself. 

Such are the results of theWestern attempts to equalize 
expenditures, to improve their roads, and enrich them- 
selves upon public money by means of the Internal Im- 
provement power exercised by the Federal Government. 
The South, we are told, and told truly, has voted no 
part of these fine allowances to the West. And thence it is 
arg-ued, and argued incorrectly, that she is an enemy to the 
West. Sir, the brief answer to that charge of enmity, is, that 
she has voted nothing on this account for herself; she has 
voted for us as she did for herself^ the argument should be, 
that she lovednjs as well as she did herself; and this is all 
that conscionable people can require. But another view 
remains to be taken of this affection, which is to be tried 
by the money standard. It is this: That, if the South 
has voted us no public money for roads and canals, they 
have paid the West a great deal of their own private 
money for its surplus productions. The South takes the 
provisions of the West, its horses and mules besides, and 
many other items. The States soutl^ of the Potomac, 
south of the Tennessee river, and upon the lower Missis- 
sippi, is the gold and silver region of the West. Leave 
out the supphes which come from this quarter, and the 
stream that Missouri is drawing from Mexico, also to the 
South of us, and all the gold and silver that is derived 
from other places, — from any places north of Mason's and 
Dixon's line — would not suffice to pay the postage of our 
letters, and the ferriage of our rivers. This Southern trade 
is the true and valuable trade of the West ; the trade which 
they cannot do without ; and with these St-ates it is pro- 
posed that we shall have a falling out, turn our backs 
upon them, and go into close connexion with a political 
caste in a quarter of the Union from which tne ^V'est nev- 
er did, and never- can, find a cash market for her surplus 
products. I know that the West, Mr. President, is not 
credited for much sagacity, and the result of her Inter- 
nal Improvement pf4^.nership, goes to justify the Beotian 
imputation to which^ we have been subject; but there 
are some things which do not require much sagacity, nor 
any book learning, to dircover how they lie. Little chil- 
dren, for example, can readily find out on which side 
their bread is buttered, and the grown men of the West 
can as quickly discover from which side of Mason and 
Dixon's fine,- their gold and silver comes. We hear much 
about binding the different sections of the Union toge- 
ther ; every road and every canal is to be a chain for 
that purpose. Granted. But why break the chains 
which we have already ? Commerce is the strongest of 
all chains. It is the chain of interest. It binds together 



the most distant nations ^ aliensj^ in color, language, re- 
ligion and laws. It unites the antipodes,— men whose 
feet are opposite, whose countries are separated by the 
entire diameter of the sohd globe. We have a chain 
of this kind with the Soirth, and, wo to the poli- 
tician that shall attempt to cut it, or break it. 

The late Presidential election was an affair of some in- 
terest to the West. The undivided front of the western 
electoral vole attested the unity, and the intensity, of her 
wishes on that point. Was that election carried by 
northern votes in opposition to' southern ones ? Was the 
West helped out by the North, in that hard struggle of 
four years duration ? Yes, to the extent of one electoral 
vote from the republican district of Maine ; to the ex- 
tent of many thousand individual votes ; but these came 
from the democracy, some few exceptions ; but nothing 
from that party which now assumes to be the friend of 
the W^est, and so boldly asserts that every western mea- 
fsure has been carried by northern, in oppo'^ition to south- 
ern votes. 

The graduation bill, Mr. President, is a western mea- 
sure : there is no longer any dispute about that. It came 
from the West, and is supported by the West. Memori- 
als from eight legislatures have demanded it ; seventeen, 
out of eighteen, western Senators have voted for it. 
Has the northeast carried that bill in opposition to the 
South ? It has repeatedly been before both Houses — was 
once on its final passage in this chamber, and wanted 
four votes, which was only a change of position in two 
voters, to carry it. Did the northeast, out of her twelve 
voiers present, give us these two ? She did not. Did she 
give us one ? No, not one. There was but one from the 
North of Mason and Dixon's line, and that of an hon- 
orable Senator — I do not call him honorable by virtue of a 
rule~rwho is no longer a member of this body ; I speak 
of Mr. Ridgely, of Delaware ; that little State whose 
moral and intellectual strength on this floor has often kept 
her in the first rank of importance. How was it to the 
South ? A brilliant and powerful support from the Senator 
of Virginia, not yet in his seat, [Mr. Tazewell,] whose 
name, for tliat support, is borne with honor upon the 
legislative page of Missouri and Illinois ; a firm support 
from the two Senators from Georgia, [Messrs. Cobb and 
Berrien^,] since ceased to be members. A motion for 
reconsideration from the venerable Macox — the friend of 
me and mine through four generations in a straight line — 
to reconsidcy.the vote of rejection with a view of pass- 
ing the main part, the first section, which contained the 
whole graduation clause. Several other Senators from the 
South, who then voted against the bill, expressed a de- 



n 



ermmation to examirre It further, and intimated the plea- 
sure it would give them to vote for it at another time if 
Vound, upon further examination, to be as beneficial as 1 
supposed. Thus stood the South and West upon that 
greatest and truest of all western measures ; and we shall 
quickly see how they stand again ? tor the graduation 
bill is again before the Senate, and next in order after the 
subject now in hand. 

How stand the North and South on another point of 
incalculable interest to the West ; the motion now un- 
der discussion — no, nat now under discussion— the mo- 
tion now depending, to stop the surveys, to limit the 
sales of public lands, and to abolish the offices of the 
Surveyors General ? How stand the parties on that point ? 
W^hy, as far as we can discover, without the report of 
yeas and nays, the Northeast, "with the exception of the 
Senator from New Hampshire on my right [Mr. Wood- 
bury] against us ; the South unanimous for us. And 
thus, the very question which has furnished a peg to hang 
the debate on v/hich has brouglit out the assertion, that 
every measure friendly to the West, has been carried by 
New England votes in opposition to Southern voles, is it- 
self evidence of the contrary, and would have placed 
that evidence before the West in the most authentic 
form, if the ingenious Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. 
Webster] had not evaded that consequence by moving 
an indefinite postponement, and thereby getting rid of 
a direct vote on the resolution which has become current 
under the name of the Senator who introduced it. [Mr. 
Foot of Connecticut.] 

llow stand the South and North upon another point, 
also of overwhelming concern to the West : the scheme 
for partitioning out the new States of the West among the 
old ones ? Whence comes that scheme ? Who supports 
it ? What its real object ? The West will be glad to 
know the wheuy the why, and the how, of that new and 
portentous scheme. But, first, what is it ? Sir, it is a 
scheme to keep the new States in leading strings, and to 
send the proceeds of the sales of the public lands to the 
States from which the public lands never came. It is a 
scheme to divide the property of the weak among the 
strong. It is a scheme which has its root in the princi- 
ple which partitioned Poland between the Emperors of 
Russia and Germany, and tlie King of Prussia. Whence 
comes it ? From the Northeast. How comes it ? By an 
nnocent and hfirmless resolution of inquiry ! When 
comes it ^ -Cotemporaneously with this other reso- 
lution of innocent and harmless inquiry into the expe- 
diency of limiting the settlement, checking emigration 



7^ 



to ".he. West, and delivering; up large portions of the 
new States to the dominion of wild beasts. T4iese two 
resolutions come together, and of them it may be said, 
** These twu make a pair" A newspaper in the North 
East contained a letter written from this place, giving in- 
formation that the resolution of the Senator from Connect 
ticut, (Mr. Foot) was brought in to anticipate and forestal 
the g'raduation bill. I saw the resolution in that light, Mr. 
President, before I saw theletter. 1 had announced it in 
that character long before I received the letter, and read it 
to the Senate. This resolution then was to check-mate my 
graduation bill ! It was an offer of battle to the West ! 
I accepted the offer ; I am fighting the battle : some are 
crying out, and hauling off, but I am standing to.it, and 
mean to stand to it. I call upon the adversary to come on 
and lay on, arv(i I tell him — 

" Damned be he that first cries outjEJfotrGH." 
Pair play and hard play, is the game I am willing to 
play at. War to the knife, and the knife to the hilt 5 but 
let the play be fair. Nothing foul ; no blackguardism. 
This resolution then from the other end of the Capitol, 
twin brother to the one here, comes from the North East; 
is resisted by the South, and is ruinous to the West. New 
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New 
Jersey, and Delaware, were unanimous for it ; Massachu- 
setts 9 to i for it ; South Carolina and Georgia were un- 
animously against it ; Virginia 10 to 1 against it ; North 
Carolina 8 to 4 against it. This scene presents itself to 
my mind, Mr. President, as a picture with three figures 
upon it. First, the young West, a victim to be devour- 
ed. Secondly, the old North, attempting to devour her. 
Thirdly, the generous South, ancient defender and sa- 
viour of the West, stretching out an arm to save her. 
Let these two resolutions pass, and ripen into the 
measures which their tenor implies to be necessary ; and 
the seal is fixed, for a long period, on the growth and 
prosperity of the West. Under one of them the sales of 
the lands will be held back ; under the other, every pos- 
sible inducement will arise to screw up the price of all 
that is sold. From that moment, the West must bid 
adieu to all prospect of any liberal change in the pglicy 
of the United States in the sale and disposition of the 
Public Lands ; no more favor to the settler ; no justice 
to the States ; no sales on fair and equitable terms. 
Grinding avarice v/ill take its course, and feed full its 
deep and hungry maw- Laws will be passed to fix the 
minimum price at the highest rate 5 agents will be sent 
to attend the sales, & bid high against the farmer, the set- 
tler and the cultivator. Dreadful will be the prices then 



run up. The ag^ents will act as attorneys for the plaintifis, 
in the execution. The money is coming to the States they 
represent ; they can bid what they please. They c»n bid 
off the whole country, make it the properly of other States, 
and lease, or rent, small tracts to the inhabitants. The 
preservation of the timber will become an object of higrh 
•onsideration with these new Lords Proprietors ; and 
hosts of spies, informers, prosecutors, and witnesses, will 
be sent into the new States, to waylay the inhabitants, 
and dog the farmers round their fields, to detect, and 
prosecute, the man who cuts a stick, or lifts a stone, or 
breaks the soil of these new masters and receivers. AVhile 
the land is public property, and the proceeds go into the 
Treasury, like other pubhc money, there is less interest 
felt in the sales by the individual Stales ; but, from the 
moment that the proceeds of the sales are to be divided 
out by a rule of proportion which would give nearly all 
to the populous State«, from that moment, it would be 
viewed as State property^ and every engine would be set 
to work to make the lands produce the utmost possible 
farthing for the individual States. Each member of Con- 
gress would calculate, in ever question of sale or gift, 
how much his State, and how much he himself, as a unit 
in that State, was to gain or los'=^ by the operation. And, 
who are to be the foremost and most insatiable of these 
UQW Lords Proprietors ^ Let the vote, on the reference 
of the resolution, answer tlie question ; let it tell. They 
are the States which never gave any land to the Federal 
Govefnment ! Massachusetts and Maine, which retained 
tlieir thirty thousand square miles of vacant territory, and 
are now selling it at 25, at 20, at 10, and at 5 cents per 
acre Connecticut, which seized upon two miliions of 
acres of the land which Virginia had ceded to the Fed- 
eral Government, and held fast to the jurisdiction as well 
as the soil, until the Congress agreed to give her a deed 
*' to all the right, title, interest, and estate of the United 
States," to the soil itself Who are our defenders ? They 
are the States south ot the Potomac,which were themselves 
ihe great donors of land to the Federal Government. 
Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia ; these are our de- 
fenders ! And without their defence, the West would 
fare now, as she would have fared without it, forty years 
ago, in the times of the Old Confederation, 

1 have now, Mr. President, gone throug-h the "chapter" 
of the conduct of the Federal Government, and the re- 
lative affection of the North and Soutu to the West. 
I commenced v/ithout exordium, and shall finish without 
peroration. On two point« more, and only two, I wish 
to be understood. 
4 



■\ 



Firsty as to the reason which has indaced m6 to enter, 
with this minuteness and precision of dctail,intothe ques- 
tion of relative affection from the North and South towards 
the West. Tiiat reason is this : that havings been accus- 
tomed, for the last five years, to see and hear the South 
represented as the enemy of the West, and tiie North- 
east as its friends, and in the very words used by the Se- 
nator from Massachusetts, (Mr. W.) on this floor, and 
having- always maintained the contrary in the West, I 
could not, without suffering myself to be g-ag-g-ed liereaf- 
ter with an unanswerable question, sit stili and hear the 
same things repeated on this floor, without entering- my 
solemn dissent, supported by authentic references, to their 
truth ; especially, when I labor under the thorough con 
viction, that the object of these statements, both in the 
West, and ii* this chamber, is to produce a state of 
things hostile to the well-being of tliis Confederacy. 
Secondly, That in repeated references, in the course of 
my speech, to the Federal Party in the United States, I 
mean no proscription of that party in mass. I have a 
test to apply to each of them, and according to the proof 
of that test does the individual appear fair, or otherwise, 
before me. The test is this : Is ht faithful to his country 
in the hours of her trial? As this question can be an- 
swered, so does he stand before me, a fair candidate, or 
tttherwise, for a rateable proportion of the offices, subor- 
dinate to the highest, which this country affords. This 
declaration, I trust, Mr. President, will not be received 
as arrogant, but taken in its true spirit, as a qualification 
due to myself, of things said in debate, and which might 
be misunderstood. 1 am a Senator — have a voice upon 
nominations to office — and the country has a right to be 
informed of my principles of action, in the discbarge of 
that important function. 



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